Forgive Us Our Trespasses
by BehrBeMine
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?
1. Prologue

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Oh, please! I need it like the Gilmores need coffee! This is my first multiple chapter story, so anything you have to say would be much appreciated.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R (eventually; it'll get there)  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean (But please don't let that steer you away! Give the story a chance, for me.)  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Thanks: Thank you to Elyssa for beta reading this for me.  
Author's Note: This is the first fanfiction I've written since becoming a new mommy. In honor of my new baby, I present this to you.  
Another Note: I'll warn you right here and now, my fics are full of angst and woe. If sadness upsets you, then this is not the story for you.

Prologue

- -  
_Spring, 2004_

"I'm bored," said Lorelai. "Let's play the question game! I am the **best** at the question game."

"I'd beg to differ, but I don't know what you're referring to," Rory replied, taking a sip of her coffee. The two sat at a table at Luke's on a lazy Saturday morning. Lorelai was off from work, Rory was home from school.

"You know! The game where I ask a question, and we both have to answer it, and then you ask a question, and - - "

"Let me guess: we both have to answer it?"

"You catch on quick there, partner." Lorelai held up her empty mug in the air. "Luke!" she exclaimed in the midst of the diner, stopping there as if that explained everything.

"No. No more coffee," said Luke, coming out from behind the counter to the Gilmore table. They were at their favorite table, the one next to the window. Kirk had been sitting there when they had first walked in, claiming that it was now **his** favorite table. He and Lorelai had gotten into quite the tongue battle over who loved the table more. In the end, Lorelai won because, well, she's Lorelai, and because she also had Rory at her side to back her up.

Kirk had long since left the diner in a slump after finishing one of his inane breakfasts: "Eggs over-easy, but don't flip them; hashbrowns, crispy, but not browned; toast, dry, and I do mean dry - - the toast wasn't dry enough last time. I sensed some margarine. Don't try to sneak it in on me." The Gilmores, though they had both finished their pancakes and a shared plate of eggs an hour ago, still remained at that one special table, sipping the hot liquid that ran through their veins.

"I don't want to play the question game," Rory finally responded.

Lorelai looked shocked. "Why on earth would my child not want to play a game with me? You used to play hide-and-seek with me all the time!"

"Yes, but you would forget to find me!"

"I would not forget. I would just get distracted. TV? Pretty."

"Still," Rory said. "That's no excuse. Don't ever teach anyone that game."

"Teach? There's nothing to teach; the name is self-explanatory. You hide, then you are seeked."

"Sought out."

"Seeked."

Rory shrugged. "You win. Be grammatically incorrect all you want."

"Thanks so much for the permission," Lorelai said with a hint of sarcasm. She hoisted the mug she had lowered back into the air, and cried again, "Luke!" She then realized that he was still standing next to their table, giving the both of them an odd look.

"No more coffee!" came the gruff reply. "You've had five cups. I'm cutting you off."

"I've only had four," Rory bragged, finishing off the last of her latest cup. As her mother had done, she hoisted the empty mug into the air. Luke silently filled her cup, ignoring Lorelai's death glare. Rory giggled. "I win."

"Win? There's nothing to win. Just like in hide-and-seek, there is no winning to be had," said Lorelai, the sore loser. "Lu-u-uuuke. Please? You gave my child some more. You're feeding her addiction, and yet cutting me off?"

"She had had one cup less than you. So I evened it out. Now I'm cutting her off, too."

"Hey!" Rory protested. "I don't feel so much like a winner anymore."

"Good, you big loser," Lorelai taunted, obviously upset. "What a couple of losers we'll both be all day if our addiction isn't fed. You do know, Luke, that this banter only comes because I'm wired up to here, or..." She stopped, realizing she didn't have an example to showcase. She raised her cup into the air once again. "Up to here!"

"Oh, how I would miss it." With that, Luke, and the coffee pot, walked away.

"Thanks a lot, Sarcasmo," Lorelai huffed. She turned to Rory and frowned. "How is it that you've had one less cup than me?"

"I drink slower."

"Since when?"

"Since I burned my tongue because I was too eager to start the first cup."

"Ah." Lorelai reached over the table to place her hand on her daughter's mug. "Well, we wouldn't want that to happen again, would we?" Just as she tried to sneak the handle into her hand, Rory snatched the mug away.

"Hey! My cup! Mine!"

Lorelai sighed. "Fine. Just leave me here to suffer, to starve, to dry up into... something dry."

"Nice," Rory mocked.

"Well how am I supposed to be clever without another cup of coffee? Especially this early in the day."

Rory looked at her watch, a big, clunky, manly, utilitarian design. That was something to be said about Rory: her fashion tastes varied from one end of the spectrum to the other. "It's almost noon."

"I maintain with my position."

"I guess you're right," Rory confessed. "We're not usually out and about this early on a Saturday."

"Because we know the secret: Saturdays were invented for sleeping in."

"So why didn't we sleep in today?"

"That's a question for the word game."

"Oh, Mom." Rory rolled her eyes.

"Now let's play the word game," Lorelai said finally. "We should, we really should, because I always win."

"You do not always win, we've never played!"

"Sure we have, you just didn't know."

"Okay, so you can't win, that means you forfeit," explained Rory in an attempt to win something out of this conversation.

"Why?"

"For breaking the rules."

"The rules being?"

"That you have to actually tell your opponent that a game is in play..." Rory smirked. "Or seek them out."

"Honey, you always hid in the same place, anyway."

"Well, I thought the same place always worked, seeing as how you never found me."

"Ah, but I knew you were there."

"Really?" Rory was interested now. "Then just where was I?"

"Under my bed. I know because I peeked when I was counting as you headed up the stairs and I could hear your footsteps on the floor above me. The rest is just a wild guess."

"Cheater!" Rory accused.

"It was a stupid game, anyway! You have to agree with me on that."

Rory solemnly crossed her arms in front of her chest and muttered, "You win."

"Yes, I do. I win everything."

Rory sighed. "So if this is a game, how do you win it?"

"By giving the best answer."

"What if you don't have an answer?"

"Then you lose."

"That's a little harsh," Rory cut in. "After all, you've had all this time to prepare for such a game, and I haven't had any. Just these last few minutes to get used to the idea."

"Does it look like I care?" Lorelai asked, not needing an answer. "Now, I start."

"Why - - "

"Because it's my game, kid. I made it up."

"You lie."

"Yeah, but you can pretend to believe me. Now, let me think, let me think... I know I've got a question in this head somewhere..." Lorelai mouthed the words "coffee, coffee, coffee" to herself as she sifted through all the things she's ever wanted to ask, but didn't have the chance to. She couldn't seem to find any words other than that certain liquid that her body craved.

"Here," Rory said, shoving her mug in front of Lorelai's hands that were finger drumming on the table. It was still half full.

Lorelai grinned. "You are _so_ my favorite daughter."

"Drink up already. It's question time." Rory looked at her watch again. "I'm going to start timing how long it takes you to ask this question."

"Why?"

"Because we can add that to the rules of the question game. You have to ask or answer the question the fastest."

"Why are you adding on rules to my game?"

Rory shrugged. "You've already wasted thirty seconds of your time, and the clock's just ticking away."

Lorelai downed the rest of Rory's mug of coffee in a few large gulps, and then placed the mug feather-light back down onto the table, closing her eyes and inhaling, then exhaling slowly. "Okay. Question, question, come out, come out, wherever you are..."

"Oh God," said Rory. "You lose."

"No, wait! I know. I've got one."

"Then let's hear it," Rory urged, expecting an all-important life defining question like "What's your favorite color?" or "How many times have you wanted to kick Kirk in the groin?" What she got instead is a question that haunts her to this day.

"What was the biggest mistake of your life?" asked Lorelai flippantly.

Rory paused, her whole body tensing into one single pose, and freezing there.

What was the biggest mistake of your life?...

She didn't know then, but she's pretty sure she knows now.

- -  
to be continued...


	2. Fall From Grace

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Thanks: Thank you to Elyssa for beta reading this for me.  
Author's Note: I'll warn you right here and now, my fics are full of angst and woe. If sadness upsets you, then this is not the story for you.

Chapter One: Fall From Grace

- -  
_Summer, 2004_

Everything had been perfect. Rory remembers closing her eyes for a few seconds in order to find out if it was all a dream. When she opened them, there was Dean, staring back at her, his love evident in his facial expression. He really did love her. He really did care for her. And she loved him, too. It was perfect.

Dean's hands were skilled that night. Rory could tell as Dean carefully set her down on her bed that he had done this before. Their lips were fused together in a searing kiss, and through it he gracefully guided her body down into position below him.

They took their time that night, as if by stretching out the act of love they could postpone what would come of it afterwards. Rory didn't think of Lindsay as Dean's tongue explored her mouth. Didn't think of her innocently sitting at home, waiting for her husband to come home from "working late". She didn't think of herself as "the other woman". She was just Dean's partner in this dance, this dance of theirs that was love.

Her first boyfriend. Her first love. Didn't it make sense that her first time coincided with those other firsts? How many girls can say that their first time was truly with a boy who loved them, and they loved back, with just as much heart?

Dean was quick to get Rory's dress off of her. It just melted from her body, and he tossed it aside to flop noiselessly on the floor. She laid there, more exposed than she had ever been in her life, and stared into his eyes as he stared into hers. She thought about how her plain white cotton underwear and bra certainly weren't what she would prefer to be wearing, but never in a thousand years did she think that morning that she would be in this position, on this night.

"Sorry for the lack of lingerie," Rory said quietly.

"Don't apologize," said Dean, almost in a whisper. "You're a conservative, sensible girl... I love that about you. You're beautiful."

"Thank you." It seemed not enough, to just thank him for calling her one of the greatest adjectives a girl can be described as. But it was all that was in her head to say. She was so caught up in how his eyes were devouring her small breasts that lay beneath the cotton cover, and her flat stomach, that rose and fell along with her breathing. She could hear every breath she took. The sound was magnified in her head as Dean stood up and started undressing himself.

Rory felt inadequate. She felt that she should be the one taking off his shirt, his pants, exposing his red boxers, his toned arms, his long legs. "Dean, should I - - "

"Shh," he said. "Stay where you are."

She did as she was told, admiring his chest as Dean slinked back onto the bed, back on top of her. He placed his mouth over hers once again, kissing her softly, gently. Coaxing her into this world of sex, a virgin taking the big step into what one can never undo, can never take back.

Rory's brain was trying to work, trying to weigh the pros and cons of what she was doing at that very moment, but it was all a jumble inside. All she could seem to think of were Dean's lips on hers, and the skin of his chest pressed up against hers. Any intellegent thoughts were immediately smothered by his kisses.

Dean broke away to ease Rory up along her back, to reach the clasp of her bra. As it snapped undone, he asked, "Is this okay? Do you want this?"

"Yes." It was one of the quickest responses she had ever given. It came out of the part of her that didn't need to think, just needed to **feel**. And she wanted to feel him.

With careful hands that had obviously done this before, Dean eased Rory's arms out of her bra straps and then tossed it off into the pile of clothing that was collecting on the floor. Rory noticed how it didn't make a sound as it landed, just as Dean didn't make a sound as he stared down at her. She could feel herself blushing, her cheeks turning pink, almost from embarrassment. She had never let anyone see this much of her before.

And then Dean's staring ceased and Rory gasped as she felt him take a pink nipple into his mouth. He sucked on it, then bit it lightly, making Rory jump, and making him grin as he left her breast to give her another kiss, this one harder than the ones before. It was as if he was building a crescendo with his kisses - - upgrading them with every new set.

Rory felt Dean's hand traveling to her other breast, which he cupped, and then played with the nipple using his fingers. He tweaked it, then ran his thumb over it as if to massage it.

"Oh, Dean," Rory breathed, "Wow." The sensations she was feeling coursing through her body at such an intimate touch were boggling her mind.

Dean gave her a smile that looked a bit like a smirk. "We're just getting started, baby."

Rory held her breath as Dean left her upper body and began to pull her panties down her legs. "Wait - - stop," she said, something inside of her telling her this was wrong. This was going too far.

"Are you okay?" asked Dean, concern written all over his face. "Do you want to stop?"

She thought about it. She loved him. "No."

Pulling her panties all the way down to her feet, Dean threw them off into the distance, making Rory giggle. "What if I can't find those panties when I need them again?"

"Oh," said Dean, feeling stupid. "Sorry." He added his laughs to her giggles.

Then Rory calmed down as Dean lowered his body down to the level of her bottom half. He spread her legs apart a little, and then ran a finger lightly between her folds. Rory gasped again, and pushed her hands down into his hair, running her fingers through it.

Rory could feel Dean's arousal rising against her lower leg. And she could hear him groan with pleasure as he said, "Rory, you're so wet. Like you're just waiting for me."

"Maybe I've been waiting for you for a long time."

"Maybe."

Suddenly, without warning, Dean stuck his finger inside of her. Rory grasped his hair a bit tighter, continuing to run her fingers through it. Watching the reactions on her face, Dean began to pump that finger in and out, in and out.

"How does that feel?" he asked, curious.

Rory could barely breathe. "Good. Good. Don't - - don't stop. More."

Dean speeded up the pumping of his finger, then added another finger to it. Rory was flabbergasted. She had two fingers **inside** of her. A total invasion of privacy. But a welcome one.

Rory moaned. "I've, I've never felt like this, in my, entire life," she gasped out between quick breaths. "Touch me some more?" she begged.

With his free hand, Dean reached up to grasp one of her breasts, and squeezed it a bit, then started working on the nipple again. When he pulled that hand away, and pulled the fingers out of her as well, Rory pouted in protest, until she felt a new, wet sensation creeping into her. Dean's tongue.

Her eyes glazed over. Dean could feel her body readying itself for her first orgasm. He pulled his tongue out of her, and swallowed her juices, sliding them down, down into his throat. "Rory," he started, his voice asking something of her, "I don't know how much longer I can wait."

"What?" Rory was barely coherent. It had felt so good, and now she was at a loss. "Oh." She looked at his boxers, saw the bulge in them. "**Oh**."

She helped Dean slide off his boxers, and off they went into the pile of clothes quickly gathering on Rory's bedroom floor. "I have protection," he revealed, reaching for his pants. Pulling them onto the bed, he took his wallet out of one of the back pockets, and inside was a condom.

"So that's where guys keep them," marveled Rory, her heart still beating faster than usual.

Skillfully, Dean rolled it onto his erection, and then was quick to start sliding into her. He slowed down as soon as he reached her entrance. Rory's face contorted in pain. "Does that hurt?" he asked, and then realized how stupid a question that was, considering her face.

"But it feels good, too," she said, her breath quickening. "Keep going."

Dean did as he was told, pushing himself fully into her. Pausing there, he looked into her eyes. "I love you," he mouthed.

"I love you, too," she mouthed back.

Dean started to pump, then, in and out of her. Slow at first, then faster and faster. Rory moaned his name, wrapping her legs around his waist to pull him in closer, deeper.

"I can't last much longer, Rory," Dean said in between pumps. "God, you're so beautiful."

Rory pulled his head down to hers, and kissed him deeply, running her tongue over his perfectly straight white teeth. They were both moaning when she pulled away, and then Dean exploded, as Rory's vaginal walls caved in on him. She was tight, so tight. She felt herself taken off into an oblivion, where there were stars and rainbows, and gorgeous sunsets. She was taken into a world of perfection, where there was no Lindsay, no nay-sayers. There was just her, and Dean. **Them**. Together.

She laid there, her small body shuddering in waves.

Dean started to pull out of her, but Rory stopped him. "Just wait, just for a minute," she pleaded. "I want to remember how this feels. You, inside of me."

Dean tenderly kissed her nose, and encircled his arms around her body. Rory's arms found their way around his shoulders, and she held him to her, tightly, so tightly. She wanted to take a snapshot of this in her brain, to remember always and forever.

When Dean did pull out of her, he laid beside Rory, and they talked about how it was perfect. And her world was, in those moments. "Do you regret it?" he asked after a long pause of just staring at one another.

Summoning up all the truth in her heart, Rory replied, "No."

Dean smiled at her then, a smile so genuine. And Rory wanted to cry, because everything was so beautiful right now. Dean's face, his arms around her, the mess of clothes on her bedroom floor. It all represented what was the perfect first time for her, and she loved it for being that way.

And then Lorelai came home. The two heard the front door open and shut, then heard Lorelai's voice carrying itself through the house into Rory's room. In a panic, both teens shot up out of bed and hurriedly re-dressed.

"Your shirt," Rory remarked hurriedly, "It's inside out."

"Oh, damn it." Dean meant to take it back off and put it on the right way, but Lorelai was coming closer to the room and there was just no time. He and Rory rushed out into the hall.

Rory made up some silly lie about Dean needing to borrow something, and then he left. She watched, her eyes closing in on the tag of the inside-out shirt that stuck out as if to be a reminder that what she had just done wasn't done the right way. She felt a slight moment of a sinking sensation, like she was falling inside of an elevator, moving to the next floor down. But there was nowhere to fall here. There were just her mother's prying eyes as she stood and thought of that inside-out tag.

As it had always been, Rory was then honest with her mother about what had happened. Her reward for that honesty was to be called "the other woman". "I hate you for ruining this for me!" she shouted as she headed outside, grabbing her coat on the way. Immediately she took her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed Dean's number. A familiar voice picked up on the other end. Lindsay.

All of a sudden, it all sank in. She had sinned, committed adultery. She was a terrible person. She hung up the phone, wishing for that voice she needed to hear right now. Then she fell to the stairs, and her tears fell with her, from her eyes that glittered in the moonlight. Her mother, the voice of reason, had taken this happiness away from her, and replaced it with this feeling of tightness in her chest that made it hard to breathe. But still the tears fell.

Lorelai, who had followed her outside and had been standing on the porch, leaning against the railing with her arms crossed in front of her chest, finally decided to lower her slim body down next to Rory's on the step, silent, apparently not knowing what to say. How odd, for someone who always had something to say.

Scooching closer to Rory, Lorelai put a comforting arm around her daughter's shoulders. Rory shuddered from the contact, and ripped her body away. She didn't want to be touched by someone who didn't understand. Someone who was supposed to forever be on her side. Someone who was judging her, that very second.

She didn't need another greater-than-thou speech, not now, not ever. As if her mother had never made a mistake. As if her mother wouldn't have done the same thing.

Lorelai wet her lips and cleared her throat, which was unneeded, but was something to do, a reason to stall the words that were going to come forth. "Kid... I'm sorry."

Sorry about what? Rory wanted to ask. _That your daughter's a whore, that she's just made the biggest mistake of her life, that you called her on it, that you ruined something which was so beautiful before?_

Rory wanted to ask. 

Instead she stayed silent, stopping her tears that turned from warm to cold on her cheeks. A long, excruciating moment stretched by while the two Gilmores sat wrapped up in that silence that so rarely touched their lives.

Finally, Rory spoke. "No, you're not."

Lorelai reached out to smooth Rory's hair back, tucking it behind her ears. Some hair stuck to Rory's face, wet from the trails of tears. Rory didn't care. She jerked away, tearing her face from Lorelai's hand. She didn't want to be touched right now.

Gulping down something invisible in her throat, Lorelai asked, "Do you want me to leave?"

Again, Rory didn't say a word. She quieted the sobs that so badly wanted to come out, and stared at her shoes. She noticed a scuff mark on one of them. Of course. Something else that had gone wrong. Another uncomfortable silence stretched on into eternity, carrying the Gilmore girls along with it. Of all the years, all the times that Lorelai had been there for Rory, had been her lifesaver in a sea of the scary parts of the world, none of it mattered at that moment. Lorelai couldn't save Rory this time. This was something Rory had to feel and go through on her own.

Rory raised her head to stare straight forward, into nothingness. She lifted her head further to see the moon, and remembered how she used to think it was made of cheese. Because Lorelai had told her so. Six years old, and wanting to eat the moon.

She couldn't eat now if she tried. A Gilmore, not able to eat. That was something for the record books.

Lorelai stared at Rory while Rory stared at the sky. She didn't utter a "Yes," didn't mumble a "No." Just sat, waiting for the world to crash down on her shoulders, waiting for the universe to swallow her whole.

Taking a deep breath in, then letting it out, Lorelai took the hint, and rose to her feet. She didn't really have time for this, anyway. She had to get back to the Inn, to her guests. To Luke. Something it looked like she'd have to figure out on her own.

Rory heard Lorelai's trudging footsteps along their front porch, then the opening and closing of the front door. Lorelai grabbed the stack of CDs, without bothering to look at them to see what they were, not really caring right now, and headed for the back door, not having the strength to walk by her hateful daughter right now. She thought of telling Rory where she was going, that she was leaving, but didn't have the strength for that, either.

She had to get back to the Inn. She had to get back to work. She had to smile for her friends - - for her "customers", and pretend that everything was okay. She couldn't let anyone know that everything in the world had just gone wrong, been turned upside down.

Rory watched from the porch step as her mother's car pulled away from the house, and headed back for the Inn. She wanted to scream. The silence that had overtaken her was ready to break now, ready to let a fresh flood of tears soak her face. What had she done? _What had she done?_ What was she going to do now?

She was alone then. And she could finally release the ocean that wavered inside of her. She sobbed openly, anguished. Just absolutely dying inside. She had never cried so hard in her life. Her throat hurt, it stung, it burned, from all the sobbing, all the tears. A continuous river of sadness, coming out from within. She sat alone on a step, crying, aching, wanting to scream. More alone than she'd ever felt before. Just minutes ago, she had been together, tied to another with love, in ecstasy, happy. Happy. Now she was more than sad. So much more. She was empty.

The darkness of the night closed in around her, the stars not shining brightly enough to shed light on her body that was crumbling in pain. She sobbed for the hundredth time, hugging herself with arms that had no strength anymore. She couldn't tell if the night was warm or cold, but was glad to have grabbed a jacket on her way outside, glad to have something to cower in, to cover up her body that shook and shook. Shivered. Not from cold on the outside, but from the icy, chilled veins within.

She thought of all the things she'd done, and couldn't undo. And then she sobbed harder, hugging her arms to her body tighter. Such a tiny little body. Tall, but gracefully thin. She sniffled, and let her hair fall into her face.

Rory was suddenly certain she was supposed to feel sorry. She silently hoped to herself that Lindsay and Dean didn't have Caller ID. The memory of the phone call from minutes ago was something she would never forget. Dialing Dean's number, and hearing Lindsay pick up the phone, her voice unsuspecting, nonchalant. And what did Rory say? Nothing. Nothing. There was nothing to say, not at that point. But maybe she should have told her. What would Lindsay have done? What would she do when she found out?

The night around her was silent, her wails the only thing that could be heard. She cried for Dean, she cried for Lindsay, she cried for their marriage that she might have just destroyed. She cried because her mother wasn't on her side, but she was right. She cried because she didn't know if anything would ever be able to fill that empty part of her, the hole in her heart, again.

- -  
to be continued...


	3. Lorelai

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Thanks: Thank you to Elyssa for beta reading this for me.  
Author's Note: I apologize incredibly for the long wait between chapters. I am sick in the hospital right now, and only get to come home for a while on the weekends. I will do as much writing as I can when I have the chance. And I'll try to hurry the recovery! Thanks. :)

**Chapter 2: Lorelai**

_Two weeks later..._

Rory was certain she had the calendar marked correctly, with the red circles around the correct dates. This is always when it happened, give or take a few days. But it had been seven days... Something was wrong. Her period was late, way late. Did it mean something? Oh, God.

She had to take a pregnancy test. She could go no longer being a bundle of nerves, waiting and waiting. Too much stress could make her skip her period; too much physical exertion. Had she been walking around town too much, trying to stay away from the home that housed the bed in which she had committed such a terrible sin? Trying to stay away from a mother who had judged her as never before?

She avoided Luke's, the Inn, anything in the entire vicinity of either, hiding from her mother, all day long. She missed Luke's coffee... She missed her mom.

But she wasn't ready to forgive her yet. For ruining everything.

Rory flipped the calendar on her wall back a few months, looking on each to see the dates that were marked in red. Yes, she had marked this month correctly. She should be bleeding right now, this very second. But there was nothing... nothing. Nothing except a pit in her stomach and a sinking sensation in her entire body, as if she were a bird falling from the sky.

She looked closely at the picture of the current month on the calendar. It was an animal calendar, with babies and their mothers, given to her by Lorelai last Christmas. She zeroed in on the baby bear that batted its mom's face lightly with its paw. Baby, baby, baby. She slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp of realization and turned around, not wanting to see a baby or a mother right now. But her realization was this: she might have a **real** baby of her own one day. Too soon, it was too soon. She'd never finish college. How could she?

Rory stood in her room, surrounded by all that reminded her of that fateful night two weeks ago. All she could see when she looked at her bed was sex. Its innocence had been stripped away - she couldn't look back on the memory of picking that bed out when she was ten. Not when such adult things had happened in it. And oh, the surroundings... the things on her wall that she had glanced at here and there while she was nearing an orgasm. They'd never look the same.

She had to do something. She had to flee from this place that suffocated her. Rory picked up her purse and ran out of her house, slamming the front door behind her. She hurried to her car which needn't be unlocked, for there was never a reason to lock anything in Stars Hollow. It was a town like out of a fairy tale or a children's show.

Sitting back in the driver's seat, Rory contemplated her next move. She was on a hunt for a home pregnancy test. She couldn't go to Doose's - they didn't sell such things in this town. Plus, there was the Dean factor in that he might be there. Rory had been avoiding him for the last two weeks, not ready to face up to what she had done. Not ready for the repercussions to rain down on her. She didn't see him, she didn't call him - not since that night that she dialed his number and his wife, **his wife** answered the phone. She knew she needed to talk to him, she just... couldn't.

So, ripping her thoughts away from the treacherous road to which they had strayed, Rory decided on what would be the plan. She would buy a pregnancy test in Hartford. And hope to God she didn't run into her grandparents while she was at it, though she doubted they ever shopped where she shopped. They were rich; they were above it. They were different.

On to Hartford it was. Rory fastened her seat belt, imagining strapping a child into a car seat, and started the car. She sped off and out of the town she lived in. The town that she had grown up in, where her reputation was that of an innocent angel who could do no wrong, could make no mistake. In a grim way, she wondered what they would all think of her now.

When she arrived at a supermarket in Hartford, she quickly perused the aisles until she found what she was looking for. She then found the dilemma of choosing which test to buy. She researched, as she often does, reading the backs of several boxes before picking the one that seemed most worthy of her money. What was in this box could determine the rest of her life. She didn't take this decision lightly.

It was uncomfortable at the checkout, standing there as the box was scanned and also looked at by the cashier, who raised her eyebrows at Rory and said, "You look so young."

"Yeah, well, things happen," Rory said defensively.

The cashier swallowed her next words and placed the box into a plastic bag that she handed Rory as soon as she had paid. Then Rory hightailed it out of there, trying to decide where the best place would be to take this test. As she drove, her thoughts turned to her mother, who she really wished could be there with her when she found out. But she hadn't really talked to her mother in two weeks, ever since spouting forth her hatred right in Lorelai's face. She still wasn't over the hurt of her mother not being there for her when she was so happy. It had always seemed before that Lorelai made every effort to understand. But would anyone understand this? She had slept with a married man. And now she might be carrying his child.

Oh, God.

Rory finally decided that home would be the best place. Even though she dreaded every time she had to walk in the door, the bathroom would be less sterile, more comforting. She needed any comfort she could grasp.

Stopping the car in front of her home, Rory got out very slowly, and it was with this same slowness that she proceeded up the porch steps, through the front door, and into the bathroom. She closed the door with a feather-lightness, gulping down her fear, wishing it would go away.

She read the directions thoroughly and did as she was told, then set the stick down on the counter and just stared. She glanced at her watch every thirty seconds, impatient, her eyes watering already.

This was supposed to be a good experience. One that you've expected. It wasn't something that was supposed to happen to a scared nineteen year-old girl.

But the world is as it is.

As Rory gazed on, slowly the stick started to form a color. She watched intently to see if it would change to pink or to blue, her heart thudding in her chest, sending the taste of vomit into her mouth. For endless seconds, she waited, afraid, alone.

Rory was secluded in her bedroom when Lorelai came home that night. She heard her mother sigh in a tired way and fling her keys onto a nearby table. The door to her bedroom was wide open, inviting. Rory was ready to talk to her mother again. To find her best friend again.

Lorelai headed straight for the kitchen, and that is where Rory found her, walking in slowly and staring straight at her mother, who was currently holding the phone, contemplating something. Probably what kind of food to order for dinner. Rory wasn't thinking about dinner.

When Lorelai didn't look up from the phone, furrowing her brows as if in concentration, Rory reluctantly cleared her throat. "Mom?"

Looking up, Lorelai stared her straight in the eye. She now had her attention. Lorelai seemed surprised. She had tried to initiate conversations for so long now, and always Rory had run away from them, not wanting to be a part of any words that might come from her mother's mouth. But now she was the initiator, one that stood trembling in the middle of the seldom used kitchen. Rory's arms encircled her body protectively, concealing a flat stomach that could so easily change.

Noticing her daughter's vulnerability, Lorelai's sarcasm melted away, and was replaced by a mature, loving tone of voice as she answered her daughter. "Yes?" Her facial features fell at the sight on Rory's face. It crumbled in pain and her eyes started filling up with tears that soon streaked their way down her cheeks.

It looked as though Lorelai's heart sank down to her feet. "Honey... what's wrong?"

Rory started nervously rocking back-and-forth on her heels. "I - I have to tell you something."

"You know you can tell me anything. Unless it's that you're going to murder me and bury me in the back yard."

Rory looked around, and shivered. She wiped away the tears on her face, though more continued to fall. Suddenly she inwardly scolded herself. She wasn't this weak; she was strong. She could face this. She could do this. She softly blurted out, "I'm pregnant."

There was a silence then that stretched on until Rory's empty stomach growled. She had forgotten to eat today. "Mom?..."

"I'm hungry. Are you hungry? You sound hungry, unless your body's just growling at me, which, lately, could be the case." Lorelai spoke quickly, as she always does, and set about looking for some food.

"Mom - "

"How about some pop tarts? I got the s'mores kind, you know they're the best. Well, actually, you like the cherry ones better, but I win because the s'mores are all we have. I know they're around here somewhere..."

Rory looked on in uncertainty as her mother banged cabinet doors and opened drawers, looking for the illusive pop tarts. Rory was confused, but couldn't find the words to express it.

"Oh my God!" shrieked Lorelai. "I know where they are!" She rushed over to the freezer and pulled out an unopened box of the s'mores flavored pastries. "It's the new thing, you know, you're supposed to freeze them. Makes them crunchy. Well, that's what they say, though I've never tried them frozen, so let's try them. Do you want one?"

Rory was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling of not knowing what to do. She concentrated on the box in her mother's hands, and compared it to the size of the test box she had thrown away a few hours ago. They were about the same size. Nausea overtook her.

"No," she managed. "I - I can't eat right now."

"A Gilmore? Not able to eat? Please tell me you're kidding. I don't have the energy to notify the press."

"Mom..."

"If you can't eat, maybe you can drink. Do you want some coffee? God, why is it that we never have coffee made? We always have to wait and wait for it to brew. Our coffee maker sucks. We should disown him. How about going to Luke's for coffee? Come on, hurry, let's break a record in the time it takes us to run there!"

Lorelai was speaking so quickly, it was almost as if her lips were a blur. Everything was a blur to Rory right now, her eyes filled up with salty tears.

"Mom, please," Rory said, her voice cracking. She swayed off balance and the room started to spin. Releasing her death grip around her own body, she steadied herself.

Finally winding down, Lorelai sighed, and then stared, her face a reflection of the hurt in her daughter's eyes. They broke the stare when Rory looked away, not having the nerve to continue, and Lorelai brought the palm of her hand to her forehead. "I need to sit down." She sent the box of pop tarts down with a "thump" and slumped down without grace to the floor. Right there, from where she was standing.

Rory closed the space between them and then slowly got down on her knees. She looked at Lorelai as Lorelai studied the floor.

Rory whispered it this time: "I'm pregnant."

Lorelai gathered herself. She had to, for her kid, who was in pain and obviously very, very afraid. She swallowed over the lump in her throat. "Are you sure?"

"I - I took a test. It said it was ninety-nine percent accurate..."

"You don't believe that remaining one percent could be true?" asked Lorelai. "You don't believe that at all?"

Rory exhaled, her breath shaky. "I want to." She broke down into more tears, and her voice was hoarse now, as if she had been crying all day. "...But I can't."

"You used a condom?"

"I told you we did."

"A Trojan?"

Rory nodded.

That day the Trojans died.

Without warning, Rory suddenly reached forward and seized her mother into a hug. Lorelai tensed up in her tight embrace. Rory was already tense.

Rory's tears were no longer silent. Her mouth opened and she sobbed. She wailed. Lorelai clung tightly to her, and an unseen tear escaped her eye. Rory knew that she was bringing her mother back to a day nineteen years ago when she had seen the test stick turn blue. She was all alone, no one there by her side to ease the trauma on her sixteen year-old heart. Rory feared that she was disappointed that her daughter's life was beginning to mirror her own, and she was wary of the consequences in that this pregnancy involved a married man.

Lorelai contemplated these words, letting them sink in deep. When Rory paused in her crying, as if to give her mother time to speak, Lorelai hurriedly wiped the one solitary tear from her face, and softened into Rory's hug, circling her arms around her child's body.

Inside Rory's heart of hearts, she hoped with a wavering doubt that despite what people would think and what they would say, her mother would stand by her, and be there for her. That she was not going to lose her daughter over this. She wouldn't let the same thing happen that had happened to her.

"Like mother, like daughter, huh?" mumbled Lorelai, her words muffled by Rory's shoulder. But Rory heard. And she laughed. She let some of the pain dissipate for a moment, and felt something good again. This wasn't all bad if they could still find humor in the situation.

Reluctantly, but eventually, the Gilmore girls moved apart. Separated before they melded into one.

"Rory, we'll get through this," Lorelai confirmed, probably having to make herself believe in those words as well. "We'll go to Luke's, have some coffee, stuff ourselves with dinner, come home and watch movies until we crash on the couch in the living room."

"Th - that's what we always do," Rory pointed out, the emotion inside of her causing her words to stumble as they left her mouth.

"That's because it works. It's the ultimate solution. To everything."

"I don't think it will work this time... Neither will wishing this would go away."

"Must you always be so logical?" asked Lorelai, her usual self starting to perk up.

"But it's still a good idea," Rory assured her mother, wiping the last of her tears away, sniffling, in desperate need of a tissue. "Is that your way of saying we don't have to talk about this anymore, for a while?"

"Correct, as always."

Rory paused. "...Okay." She paused again. "I think I'm going to lay down for a little while first. I think I need a nap."

"If you want me to, I'll knock you out."

Rory smiled faintly. "No thanks."

Grasping Lorelai's hands, Rory rose to her feet, pulling her mother along with her. The kitchen seemed to close in on them as they stood together, now understanding one another like never before.

Into that bedroom, into that bed, Rory crawled, the sound of her body like quiet whispers on the soft cotton of her comforter. She pulled it down from where it was so neatly tucked, and crawled underneath it. She buried herself in it, grasping the fibers tightly within two aching fists.

She laid there, at the scene of the crime. She thought about this little being that was now growing inside of her. She thought about now having to switch to decaffeinated coffee, which really wasn't coffee at all. It wasn't even second best, it was nothing in the Gilmore world she had been raised in.

She remembered trying her first cup of coffee at ten years old. Instant addiction; momentary bliss. She had been guzzling the addicting liquid by the gallon since. She thought of when her child would try his or her first cup of coffee. The day they would become a true Gilmore. Lorelai would see to it that the child got started on such a path as soon as possible, that would be certain.

She thought about Dean. What he must be going through right now, without even knowing the worst of it. She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue.

to be continued...


	4. Dean

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Thanks: Thank you to Elyssa for beta reading this for me.  
Author's Note: I hear crickets chirping... is anyone out there still with me? I know the plot in the last chapter was very common, but I hope you can forgive me and see this story through to the end. Thank you for the well wishes!  
Another Note: To answer your question, Jay, I'm not sure yet just how much Lorelai will make it into the story. I'm kind of just winging it, and hoping for the best. The fact that you like how I write her character has made me stop and think. I'm trying to write more of Lorelai into this. (Lorelai, you had better be in character, or you're fired... Read the chapter.) Thank you for commenting.

**Chapter 3: Dean**

_She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue._

Blue, like the stripes on her skirt. Rory stood in front of a new full-length mirror in her bedroom. Lorelai had originally bought it for the Inn, but had decided it didn't go well where she placed it. So she had given it to Rory. She used money from the Inn's stash, so she was a little nervous about giving the mirror away. "Don't tell the boss. I might get fired." She stopped to think for a second. "Oh wait, I am the boss. Well, in that case, 'Lorelai, you're fired'."

"I think you deserve leniency," Rory offered.

"Why?" Lorelai asked, with mocking fire.

"Because you're the boss. The Inn needs you. It wouldn't be fair to punish the Inn for your mistake. It would hurt its feelings... it would be offended."

Lorelai grinned. "You are a very smart girl."

"Thank you."

"I like you."

"Thank you."

"Your hair is very pretty."

Rory furrowed her brow, confused. "What?"

"Just trying to get you to say 'thank you' again."

"Weirdo."

"Thank you."

Rory laughed.

She stood now, looking into the mirror, on what she would forever call "the day after". She was wearing the Chilton uniform: plaid skirt, plain top, white sweater. She had wanted to wear it at least once more, to help say goodbye to being a little girl. Before the lump formed in her belly, before her hips widened and her thighs grew. Before she officially became a woman and a mother all in the same day.

This little girl stared into that mirror, as if it was a telescope. She had wanted a telescope so badly when she was ten. "I want to see aliens!" she explained.

"Look at Kirk," was her mother's answer. No telescope for this girl.

She stared into the mirror at a face she no longer recognized. A slut, a whore... "the other woman". A girl who was going to destroy lives, destroy a marriage, today. She didn't want to, she really didn't. But she had to tell Dean. This was his child, too.

Rory turned away from the mirror, not strong enough to face it anymore. She peeked her eyes at her bedroom door, making sure that it was closed. It was. She proceeded to take off her Chilton uniform; peeled her sweater off, slid her skirt down her legs, pulled the shirt up and over her head. Rory gathered the clothes into a messy pile and took them to her closet, burying them in a deep, dark hole at the back of her closet. She didn't want to see them for the rest of her life. Well, at least the rest of the year.

She then set about surveying the rest of her clothes. This was an important day, and she had an important task to complete. She was going to tell Dean.

Tentatively she reached out to grab a specific hanger. Hanging on it was a black t-shirt with a small "v" cut out in the center at the top. Simple. Sensible. Perfect. Next, she fetched a pair of jeans from the bottom drawer of her dresser. They had a flower design on the side of both legs. They were new; she had never worn them before. It was fitting; she had never done something like this before.

Rory took a deep breath, and started to get dressed.

Her fingers on the steering wheel were numb. She held onto it, tightly. She was afraid she would forget where Dean lived, just because. A part of her hoped that would be true. She wasn't ready to face this, to face him. But she would never be.

Yet she arrived, all in one piece, with broken pieces on the inside. The slam of the car door startled her. It was so loud, so sudden. Rory realized she was on her feet. She fought to keep her balance. Vomit stirred in her stomach, just waiting to pounce.

Releasing the breath she didn't know she'd been holding, Rory took one step forward, then another. As she crossed the driveway, she began to hit her stride. Her footsteps on the cement sounded hollow, just like her heart.

Rory reached the front door and right away, she pressed the doorbell, not wanting to stop and let herself think. Thinking might provoke running. And she didn't want to run away. Actually she did want to, but her conscience wouldn't let her.

Impatient, she rang the doorbell again. Finally, the door was opened. And there stood Lindsay, her face annoyed. She started tapping her foot on the ground, her feet dressed in pink slippers.

"Rory," she said, recognizing the trembling girl in front of her. "Tell me, what time is it?"

Rory looked down at her watch. Reluctantly, she said, "8:37..."

Lindsay nodded. "8:37 in the morning." Rory looked confused. "What day is it?" Lindsay continued.

Slowly, it came out: "Sunday..." Lindsay's taps sounded like fireworks exploding. Rory was trying very hard to concentrate.

Lindsay finally solved the puzzle. "I was sleeping."

Realization crept into Rory's face, her eyes widening. "Oh my gosh, you were sleeping in. I am **so** sorry. I didn't even think..."

Lindsay's face softened. "Forget it, I'm over it," she said, flicking her hand to her right. She sighed. "So I assume you're looking for Dean?"

Rory exhaled. "Yeah. Is he here?" She looked beyond Lindsay to the home inside.

"He's at work."

Rory looked back at Lindsay. "Work?"

"Yes. He works weekends now."

"Oh." Rory's disappointment showed.

The two paused for a couple of minutes, and were wrapped together in a dead silence. Finally, Rory spoke. "Where is Dean working today?"

"Doose's."

Rory took off. As she hurried away, Lindsay yelled, "But you won't be able to talk to him!"

Rory's steps went on uninterrupted. "Well, I've got to try!"

"He'll be too busy!"

"Maybe I can catch him on a break or something."

By the time Rory turned around to say thank you for the information, and apologize again, Lindsay had gone back inside and shut the door. Rory got into her car and drove straight to Doose's, her nerves eating her alive. Her body was shaking so severely that she nearly lost control of the car, more than once.

Regardless, she arrived at her desired destination without a scratch. Hating herself already, Rory made her way to the tiny grocery store. Immediately she surveyed her surroundings, looking for the father of her baby. Perusing the aisles, she finally found him helping an old woman find the peas.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Rory curiously. "It's the peas. You came here looking for peas, didn't you?"

"I prefer them fresh," Rory lied. She hated vegetables, peas the most.

Dean held his hands up in front of his chest, his palms to the ceiling. "Then... what are you doing here?"

God, he was beautiful. Rory looked around her. "I think we should be alone," she whispered.

Dean raised his eyebrows. The two of them were now the only ones in the aisle. "Why are you whispering?" he whispered back.

"I don't know," revealed Rory in a normal tone, her voice sounding defeated. She walked slowly toward Dean, closing the gap between them. "I... I have something to tell you," she began.

"Okay," Dean said with nonchalance, shrugging his shoulders. "Go ahead."

"Go ahead?"

"Tell me."

Rory's heart was beating at an abnormal rate. She swallowed air. Her mouth was dry.

She was on the verge of a breakdown.

"Rory..." Dean started when she said nothing. "Rory, you can tell me any "

"I hate peas," Rory said, suddenly bursting out words. For the first time, she didn't like the sound of her own voice. Just as Dean was starting to ask her to clarify, Rory cut him off again. "I lied. I said I liked fresh peas, and I don't I don't like any peas. I hate vegetables, well, most of them. I'll eat corn, carrots, lettuce on my burgers, oh and celery, I'll eat celery. Sometimes. But not always, I mean, sometimes you just don't feel like eating celery. Even if it has cheese whiz on it, or peanut butter, with those raisins that are supposed to be ants, on a log, the log made of peanut butter, you know? And I'll always eat celery with Ranch dressing, even though it's got to be the right brand." All of this told with a rambling speed that was very Gilmore and made Dean's head spin. Before he could say something, Rory's face crumbled up in pain, and she started to cry. She put her head in her hands to catch the tears that were falling from her eyes. "I'm a horrible person," she sobbed, her voice muffled by her hands.

Dean was flabbergasted. He didn't know what to say. "Uh..." He looked at the small figure before him, and his face melted in concern. "No, you're not." He stepped toward her, but she backed away.

Rory took a long sniffle, and raised her head, taking in Dean's expression. She searched his eyes for confirmation, for traces of truth.

"Yes, I am," she said, believing every word that came from her mouth. "I slept with a married man in my own house in my own bed! Then tried to lie about it. And now, God, I have something to tell you." She broke down into tears again.

Dean held his breath.

Rory's voice was so sad, so small. She was a child saying these words. "I'm pregnant."

Dean didn't have time to react. This girl that he loved was dying inside. He reached out and seized her, pulling her close. He had no words, no way of consoling his best friend but to hold her.

"Shhh..." he finally said. Rory cried on. He stroked her hair. Nothing else mattered. Right now, he was with Rory. And that was it.

A customer, a frail looking old man, wandered by. He stopped to look at the happy couple. "We didn't have her favorite brand of peas," Dean explained.

Rory arrived home with no more answers than she started with. She hadn't let Dean have a reaction, she had just had one of her own. It was as if her emotions were all bottled up, trapped. And then in that moment, with the security of having Dean there, the bottle broke.

"Hey, babe," greeted Lorelai when Rory came through the front door. She hadn't even seen her daughter yet, but she decided that the opening and closing of said door was Rory's work. (Even though everyone who knew the girls had been told to barge right in. Lorelai never "felt like" answering the door herself, which was apparently a big factor. **The** big factor. Calling out "Rory!" or "it's open!" was what she chose to do. And since it was her house, no argument was sufficient.)

"Hi, Mom," Rory answered, stepping into view. Lorelai was spread out on the couch. Immediately she noticed Rory's dull, lifeless tone and her tear-streaked face.

Lorelai softened her eyes and her own voice. "What happened? Where were you?"

Rory gave her a pointed look that said it all. Dean. Either that, or Rory had been involved in a train wreck.

Lorelai nodded to show she understood. "Oh."

Rory's voice wavered when she spoke, as if the tears were coming again. They were certainly on their way. "I have to go to my room. I have to be alone. I can't be with you right now."

As Lorelai absorbed the sting, Rory turned on her heel and rushed to her bedroom. _The scene of the crime._ The door slammed and she winced. She hadn't known there was such anger within her. But it brought her to a realization: she **was** angry. Not just sad, not just regretful, not just wallowing in her own self pity. Mad. Mad at herself, for letting this happen. It was her fault. It was.

Rory groaned and flopped down on her perfectly-made bed. She slammed her head into her pillow, and rested her feet with their dirty shoes near the foot of the bed. This should bother her, but so what? It didn't matter; she didn't care.

She ran her tongue over her teeth and made a face as though she had just tasted something sour. Residue brought her back to what happened only minutes ago.

She had just left Dean stunned, tearing her body suddenly from his embrace. Out of nowhere. And then she did something she had done before and no doubt will one day do again. In one breath of air she said, "I have to go." And then she was gone.

Now, standing on the curb, she walked down to the street. She got a distance of about three feet before collapsing. Standing on her hands and knees, her stomach got its revenge. She vomited up everything she had eaten the day before. She kept gagging and vomiting more, over and over again. It was exhausting.

When she was finally done, and had the attention of everyone on Main Street, slowly Rory climbed to her feet. Then stood on shaky legs, somehow making it to her car. On the way home, Rory's stomach ached and growled. Sharp, sudden pangs would occasionally attack her stomach and sometimes surrounding areas. She was in a lot of pain.

Rory brushed her teeth, not able to stand the taste in her mouth any longer. She fell back into her bed, after turning her stereo on. The sounds of Dave Matthews Band flooded through every inch of her bedroom. She closed her eyes and attempted to float out of this world, into oblivion.

But she could only think of one thing. Rory sighed, and gave in to the thoughts. Pregnant in her teens, heh. She really was her mother's daughter.

to be continued...


	5. Lindsay Bed of Lies

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Oh, please! I need it like the Gilmores need coffee! This is my first multiple chapter story, so anything you have to say would be much appreciated.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Thanks: Thank you to Elyssa for beta reading this for me.  
Author's Note: Apologies for the slowness of updates. Hospital; me; bad. It's a thing. I have that same problem that other writers seem to get, we cannot get Life to understand things, even when we say, look, Life: I am a writer and I need to write and that should be the end of my point. Somehow it just doesn't compute; I think Life needs some better form of communication to make it understand. Don't worry. I'll work on that.  
Another Note: If you still have not given up on me, you are one strange being. I love you for being that way.

**Chapter 4: Lindsay (Bed of Lies)**

- -  
"I'm not saying there was nothing wrong,  
I just didn't think you'd ever get tired of me."  
- Matchbox Twenty

_She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue._

Blue, like the ocean tint in her cerulean eyes. Crystal clear they were, as she stared at an ancient tree in her back yard. Infested with leeches, it awaited its own doom.

"Smackdown!" shouted Kirk, his own special goodbye. From the inside of his trusty tractor, he tipped his orange plastic construction hat in a final silent sionara before proceeding to knock over the tree, relieving it from its suffering, effectively taking it out of its misery. Pain shattered, leaping from its ancient host to Rory's tender flesh. She hugged herself tightly, trying to keep from doubling over in shock and pain. She stood at the funeral of her favorite childhood tree, dying inside as it died on the outside.

Rory was a little girl again as the tree came falling down. It fell away from her, leaning on an edge and then collapsing in an undignified heap; as it smacked the ground, the thud of it was sickening. Rory blanched, willing the vomit in her stomach to stay there. She didn't want another showing of all that she had digested that morning. She couldn't handle it. Not again.

Beyond Rory's tears, she could see the many rings on the inside of the tree trunk, telling of a rich and lengthy life. A life longer than her own. Behind these tears she could see an eleven year-old Rory, proudly singing old '90's songs to her tree, one of her best friends. Skipping around, being careful to jump over any flowers that sprung out beneath her small feet. Rory was never fond of death, at all. Not for plants, fish, bugs, zebras, cows... not for anything living and breathing of air.

Why, it was a wonder she wasn't a vegetarian. Then again, not. She had tried to ban meat from her diet, once. It lasted for almost a day. With a tummy filled with only plain noodles gone stale, the eight year-old, who was once again proving she was exceptional for her age - - for any age, followed her mother into the nearest McDonald's for dinner. She made a thing of mirroring Lorelai's steps exactly, and counting them out loud. This habit drove Lorelai crazy (well, crazi-er), becoming one of the top-most things she would pray to Bob for Rory to outgrow. (Lorelai raised her daughter not to believe in God, but to trust in whatever deity she found worthy. The very day she clarified that, the day Rory finished reading through the Bible for religious "research" - - God, that kid researched from the day she was born, Lorelai took Rory by the hand, all seven year-old, fifty-some-odd pounds of her, and lead her around the quaint streets of the small town of Stars Hollow. Pointing out this guy and that, the tree with moist moss growing out of the grooves of its trunk, the squirrel who stole one of her fries, Lorelai encouraged her perky-eyed daughter to choose for herself what should be believed in.

Rory looked at the tree; squealed half in fear, half in delight as the black, chipper squirrel - - she'd never seen one that color before - - seized the crinkly fry from her hand. She mourned the loss of a dead flower on the sidewalk, and a stepped-on lady bug. Eyes that were always alert scanned through the mass of dancers across the street, little ballerinas, hardly bigger than her, practicing endless leaps and jumps, perfecting arm movements that were graceful enough to be called perfect in the first place, dancing, dancing, dancing past the wide open doors of a studio obviously built for that purpose. Oh, to fly through the air like that!

She thought of leopards at the zoo she had seen on a class trip, and wondered what her mother thought of the zoo. But she was wise in knowing that this was not the time to ask. Green grass poked out of dirt in the ground, waiting to be plucked, and tossed away. There were lawn mowers buzzing - - wasn't that an amazing contraption? What to believe in, _what to believe?_

"Hun..." Lorelai prodded, jiggling around Rory's hand that was still clasped in hers. "This decision was not supposed to be so hard. What do you want to believe in? I don't care - - it could be a toaster, or a hot dog. It could be a snail! And you know the magic of our games? You can change the answer later. Believe me, you're going to wish that I administered the SAT's."

"What are the SAT's?"

"High school. Big test. Later."

Rory nodded. She understood this kind of impatience. Mom was hungry. Rory exhaled with a shrug of her shoulders, narrowing her eyes. Slowly she surveyed the block before her one more time, tilting her head to the left and to the right while her feet stayed rooted in place. This was a very important inspection. She was going to find her higher power on this street today.

Having noticed everything already, the street looked bland. But then, wait - - there was something. There was a break in between two buildings, a small alley. It didn't look like any alley Rory had seen before. Alleys were dark, dirty, scary. This one was paved by bricks stained red, like blood over a scab - - over a healed wound. It was a sign. But it was too far away.

Rory stepped closer. Gently she let go of her mother's hand. Something was calling her, something, and the future journalist in her had to see. Baby steps forward took her to the alley holding the secret she sought. The sunny air was stationary. No wind ruffled her hair. She was growing it out long now so that it would learn to flow in the breeze, the way long hair does.

The strange silence that had rested in the air was pierced by a heavy-set man who called himself "Taylor". "Sir, do you see a mattress here?" he asked. "Is there some bedside table that coaxes you into sleep?"

Rory stopped just outside the narrow lining of bricks leading sideways from the street. She stared before her, at a pitiful sight. A man in his late fifties with a big belly, like Santa Clause, sat on the ground against the wall of one of the buildings blocking the alley in - - the one on the right side, Rory noted (proud of herself). His legs were sprawled out before him, his chest hunched over, his closed eyes aiming at his shoes that were falling apart. Honestly, they resembled bowling shoes. Perhaps, thought Rory (for she was always thinking something), he had stolen them from a bowling alley. What desperation. Who designed those shoes, anyway? Were they just the inevitable rejects? Who would wear them by choice? Not only were this man's shoes hideously ugly, but they were obviously not built to last - - among the frayed stitches and large scuff marks was the toe end of one of the shoes, completely worn off! It looked like an animal had tried to eat the shoe and, on second thought, had spit it back out. A wise decision, really. (And who said animals weren't remarkably intelligent?)

Rory sighed, feeling sorry for that man and his shoes that were falling apart. In fact, everything about him seemed to be falling apart. Maybe his heart was, too. She looked down at her own shoes that were far too small to give away to that stranger on the street. She doubted he'd want them, anyway. They would be hard to part with. They were made with her own two hands. Sort of. She and her mother didn't have much money - - Lorelai tried to hide it from her, but she knew. They had taken a trip into K-Mart together, Lorelai's strong arm around Rory's shoulders that she hoped would one day be as strong. Nobody was as strong as her mother, but she'd like to be second best.

Plain canvas shoes were being sold for five dollars a pair. Five dollars for mother, five dollars for daughter. Next, there were fabric glues in all sorts of radical colors, and paint brushes, three for a dollar. Lorelai sorted through her change purse to provide the extra 43 cents needed.

Once home, Lorelai handed Rory her much smaller shoes as well as the colors they had chosen together. And Rory set to work. The colored glue tubes had long, fine points at the end for precise placement. Rory drew yellow cows and blue bunnies; pink clouds and purple starfish. She finished off with emerald green grass, wanting some color to be realistic, but her colorful zoo was worth admiring. In the end, though, she found that she much preferred her mother's shoes, which had been delicately painted with gold and silver sparkles all over. The shoelaces were decorated with shiny blue squiggles. All in all, both pairs were good shoes, created with love, and Rory's were shoes that later would be kept by Lorelai her whole life through.

These shoes were now worn in, no longer brand new. Rory had taken many a step in them. She decided she would be the one to take them many steps more.

The sleepy man grunted as Taylor nudged him with his foot. He kicked a foot of his own groggily, gently - - apparently his strength was gone. In his hand, Rory could see a whiskey bottle within a small crumpled paper bag. The homeless man stereotype.

"Sir," Taylor continued, his tone whiny and annoying, "You cannot litter our streets this way. This is a respectable town, and I will not have you littering our streets this way. There are plenty of shelters in - - Sir?"

The man's bottle had tipped over so far that the alcohol was now overflowing, spilling onto the bricks.

Rory felt for him. Even if he did continually spend any change he may beg off of someone on booze, in a self-destructive cycle, over and over again. Even if he was only drowning himself. We all make our mistakes. It doesn't mean we deserve them.

This man meant something to her. He symbolized something she wanted to remember.

She thought of her old fish. Drowning in alcohol, too. Floating upside down in its little circular glass fishbowl. Golden and beautiful, still as death... because it was dead. She had poured some of Mom's beer into its tiny tank, thinking it might be thirsty for something other than water. She learned something that day. Alcohol really does kill; really does solve nothing. On this day that she stared at the homeless man, she hadn't touched it since.

Up until that day of death that Rory would feel guilty about for months, her pet had always just been called the fish. She thought finally it deserved a real name, if for nothing else at least the purpose of having something worthwhile to put on its headstone. Really... everything deserved a name. Especially to be put on a piece of cardboard marking its existence, in front of which flowers would be placed for roughly five days, until the mourner became bored or found another pet.

"Bob" she would name him, as her eyes focused in on her old friend _bobbing_ up and down in the water. It was a good fish, who now would have a good name.

Bob became one with this drunk old man on the street. Their alcoholic stomachs collided, and became a single spirit that would learn its lesson in time.

Bob, stupefied and on the ground, would become Rory's God. (At least for now.) A man who kept near him what he desired most. Bob, someone who would give up everything else for that little bit of happiness he could grasp. Bob, who gave the best lesson (in this case through his "conversation" with Taylor) without opening his mouth: _just ignore what you don't want to see._

Oddly charmed, Rory cocked her head at the scene before her eyes. As Lorelai stamped her feet in the background, seeming more a child than Rory herself, Taylor stole the bottle of liquor from Bob's sedated hands, and kicked him a little harder this time.

Rory frowned. An assault on Bob was an assault on her! She would protect her demented role model. She looked down to her feet, and searched the ground for a weapon. A few feet away, she found a small rock that wouldn't inflict much damage - - but would startle someone, all right! She hurled it at Taylor.

Feeling the small slap of an object on his back, Taylor turned around to confront the angry eight year-old with her hands on her hips. "Hmph!" Rory voiced, proud of herself. She lifted her chin up higher. Taylor's eyes bulged, realizing he was being attacked by this small but determined thing. He stepped forward, but Rory had to work to keep the giggles down. He was no threat to her. Obviously, with the way Taylor had handled the previous situation, merely asking Bob to budge rather than getting his hands dirty and _making_ him, he was a softy, a pushover. Usually Rory was as well, but right now, so close to Bob... she believed.

Taylor found his voice to speak. "Young lady..." Rory gave him her meanest eyes. "...ouch."

"Leave him alone!" she commanded.

Raising a pointer finger in lecture stance, Taylor slowly stepped closer and closer to Rory. She took off running. Her mental strength was gone. But Bob, still on the fringes of sleep, he would make sure she got away.

"Leave him alone forever!" she yelled. She reached her stunned mother, and grabbed her hand in mid-run. She dragged her along, leading her toward someplace, anyplace that wasn't here.

As they got away, Rory turned her head back to yell in a voice that was shaky with her running steps, "Catch me if you can!")

That was the story of Rory's leader that Lorelai revisited as the two stepped into McDonald's that day, Lorelai ruing the day she let Rory learn to count. But at least this counting of the steps thing sharpened Rory's math skills to a finely chiseled point, one that would mock Lorelai by correcting her, many a time.

A burger, that was what Rory wanted. A big, meaty, disgustingly greasy burger that soaked right through the bun.

But... that was once living... She heard the dead cow's _moo_...

Lorelai sat down with her Big Mac, her slaughtered meat. Rory sat down across from her, sipping her Root Beer and glaring at nothing in particular. Hungry she was. Damn hungry. She was surprised as she formed that swear word in her head. Her innocent little head. God, she really **was** hungry.

Lorelai's face held a wicked grin. "You can eat the skimpy lettuce off my burger," she teased.

"I hate you," Rory mocked, her small voice a monotone.

"You're the one who wanted to save the world and its cows. Oops - - here comes my mouth - - I'm going to kill this dead cow all over again. Grr..."

Hungry Little Rory uttered something like a sob. She couldn't take it. She stabbed a fry with the plastic fork in her hand.

"I'm going to tell them that you're damaging the merchandise," Lorelai promised, always loving to play. This woman had energy in her sweat, and resolve in her bones.

Some people just never gave up.

But those people weren't Rory. Not that day. She whimpered and stuck out her hand to accept change that had been weighing down Lorelai's pocket. Off she trotted and back she came with a burger bigger than her own stomach. Her dietary days were over.

In the present day, a tree was falling... Kirk was hollering like a drunk Gilmore in a bowling alley. He raised his arms up over his head. "And it's down for the count! WooHOOOO!"

"I am unmoved," Rory muttered, annoyed by how easily others could abstain from caring. But no one was there to hear.

Kirk's tractor started digging up the roots of Rory's tree. Disemboweling it. It was gruesome.

She couldn't breathe. She didn't know how to say goodbye. And yet she was.

Sometimes things happen whether we can take it or not. Bitterly she thought this as it drew a parallel. The parallel rested within her flat tummy that had yet to expand.

Reeking of death, Rory stepped back in through the back door of her house. Facing the kitchen, she hugged herself still, alone and trembling. If she were ten, right now she would be making a headstone for Terrance. Terrance the Towering Tall Tree. Not with red stripes, nor purple polka dots, but cold, cold grey. For this was no laughing matter. Laying a friend to rest.

She shivered.

Rory's day was just beginning.

It was on that morning, on the day after the day after, that Dean told Lindsay the truth.

Still mourning every inch of bark on her deep-rooted friend, Rory stood solemnly before the full-length mirror in her room, examining her upper body, exploring it as if for the first time. Faded blue jeans hugged her legs, clinging tightly, as if her body was some wonderful thing... she wondered if they mirrored Dean at all.

Possibly. Just to close her eyes was to feel the touch of his hands on her skin, snaking up the length of her legs, savoring the hike on the way to the peak - - the body part beneath the "v" shape of her panties. She blushed, just at the thought, her drumming heart awakening the blood of her veins, allowing it to surge through to the surface and stain her face a deep pink. Such womanly thoughts were these. Who was the girl whose mouth suddenly formed a weak smile with lips shut to contain a gasp from the memory?

Lorelai knocked on the door, startling Rory and taking that smile away. "Rorrry?" Lorelai purred.

"Me no comprende," Rory replied. "Thanks, come again."

"Maybe if you let me in, I'll explain the English language to you."

"Si?"

"My head is nodding."

"Sorry, Mom..." Rory started, ready to keep the dam up between them, before her eyes bulged as the doorknob turned. "Don't come in, I'm naked!"

Lorelai paused. "This I've gotta see." Barging right in behind the door that was open exactly two seconds later, Lorelai stopped short at the sight of her daughter, scrambling for a shirt to cover the fact that her upper body was covered only by a tight black sports bra.

"So..." Lorelai began awkwardly, "you're naked." Rory rolled her eyes and shifted her weight to her right side. "What a great mother-daughter moment," Lorelai continued. When it looked like her daughter was ready to shoot her, she cleared her throat. "Checking out the merchandise?" She indicated what was obvious.

Eyes full of laughter, Rory said in a haughty way, "If you must know, yes."

"Ah." Lorelai understood. "Before your body becomes damaged goods?" Rory looked on. "Before you grow a basketball where your stomach used to be, and your thighs expand as if with built-in water wings, the stretch marks invade, and your boobs sag down to your knees?"

Rory's lips moved, but nothing came out. She struggled to absorb that and therefore form words. "...Is it really that bad?" she finally managed.

"Yes," Lorelai said without pause, her lips forming the Lorelai grin. Evil she was.

"Hmm." Rory raised her eyebrows, all excitement stifled. "Well, thanks for the heart-to-heart."

"It **is** what I'm good at," Lorelai replied, bowing her head gracefully as her hand moved over her heart. She almost seemed genuine sometimes. Almost.

Rory began moving her right foot back and forth over the floor in front of her. "So..."

"Right. So. Anyway. Um... I was thinking of cooking that bag of fries in the freezer, so I thought, you call the fire department, and I'll turn on the oven."

"Can I put on a shirt first?" asked Rory, continuing to shield herself with an afghan full of holes.

"Hmm..." Lorelai considered this. "How fast can you dial?"

"Faster than I can type."

Lorelai's face lit up, half in amazement and half in sarcasm. "Really? Faster than sixty-two words per minute with no mistakes?"

"Do you forget nothing?"

"I'm sorry, what were we talking about?"

"Out," Rory ordered, her finger pointing at the open door.

Lorelai closed her smiling mouth in mock hurt. "Wow. Naked **and** mean. Dean's a lucky guy."

"Mom!"

"All right, all right. I'm outtie."

"Lame."

"I know you are but what am I?"

Rory muffled any further banter by closing the door behind her mother as soon as she had left the room. She sighed, and took her place again in front of the mirror. Holes in her shield of afghan revealed large dots of pink skin. She zeroed in on one particular patch, envisioning it growing and stretching. Her body had always grown steadily and proportionately, never leaving any noticeable stretch marks as evidence that a growth spurt had visited. Truthfully, she didn't even know what a stretch mark would look like, especially on her own body. A lot of women acquired them during pregnancy, this much she knew. She gave up quickly the task of asking her mother about any derogatory marks on **her** body when Lorelai's reply kept being, "My body is, has been, and always will be more perfect than it would have been had I not been me." Rory shook her head - - moving right along - - she grimaced when she imagined considering stretch marks on herself as being downright ugly. Would Dean think they were ugly?

_Dean._ At that thought, she was no longer standing in her room. Closing her eyes, she shivered. Suddenly she saw herself under a spotlight, blackness all around. The light shone brightly down on her, baked her in its heat till she was hot, _hot_. Dean smirked as he stepped out of the shadows, as naked as she. They stood matching in tight-fitted blue jeans. Rory's eyes found their way to Dean's chest, so full of skin and ripples. She dropped her blanket.

Dean said nothing, but she heard him in her ear: "I want you." She swallowed a lump of nothing, her dry throat causing her to cough. She couldn't be sexy anymore. But, "You're always sexy," Dean said to her, again without forming words. He was sexy, the way he could be so alluring as he just stood there, that slight smile on his lips. His chest was just as she remembered it: hard muscle, enclosed by taut, very tanned skin. Dean's skin was always that way, as if the sun stopped on the way to its rise every morning just to give him a kiss that made him glow the way he did. But there was something from within, too, something that made his eyes sparkle, some inner happiness; some form of sunniness inside. He was something else through her eyes. Something beautiful couldn't touch.

So gracefully, he got down on his knees. Rory swallowed again as that smile turned to her. That precious, winning smile that won her over from the first time she saw it. His top row of even, white teeth glistened, calling her name.

Rory lowered her head so that her eyes were directly on him, past the glaring spotlight, past her bra that really was so tight, it made her breasts seem to fill out further.

Dean wet his lips with his tongue. He found the hole of one of the belt loops on Rory's jeans, wrapping a finger around it. He held tightly to it, with his whole hand, making a fist that promised he wouldn't let go. That was all right; she didn't want him to. With his other hand, Dean loosely gripped Rory's ankle. Confused, she looked on.

Looking deeply into her eyes, Dean took her confusion away as his hand began to trace up her leg, past her calf, past her knee, then higher, and higher... and higher, until it was as if her heart lost consciousness - - the beat of it went as dead as everything else except this moment, this ecstasy. She threw her head back, and she was falling... falling...

Out of the deafening abyss, there came a sound. Rap rap rap. _Tap tap tap tap._

Like the sudden jolt from a dream, Rory was snapped back into the present time. From a darkened stage back to her room she zoomed, and so startlingly quick, her eyes popped back open. Dazed, she watched as the lazy swirl before her slowly developed, like a Polaroid picture. She found herself collapsed on her floor, her leg still quivering from its journey. She didn't like it here, away from her dream-like fantasy. She wanted to go back, she wanted to go back! Because, who would want to stay here, in a heap, on the cold floor?

Disoriented and grouchy, Rory performed the necessary movements to push herself up half-way and then sluggishly rise to a stand.

Again came the tapping, this time sounding more urgent. It was coming from her window. Embarrassed all the way down to her toes that she had been seen like this, Rory sharpened her motor skills in an instant, busying herself with covering her upper half before she could face up to her gentleman caller, the only one who ever tried to contact her in this way. Some people use doors. She had previously introduced this notion to him, the love of her life, and had gotten a line about how her mother had once said very much the same thing. Along with that she got a "Huh," and a "Go figure." It was at that point that she had given up, because really, she was only teasing. It was so romantic to see him this way, at her own bedroom window, patiently (well, not on this day) waiting for her to want to see him, too, and throw open the window. Not once had she turned him away.

Carelessly, Rory reached into her closet and yanked out the nearest shirt with so much hurried force that the pink-fuzzy-decorated hanger (Lorelai's idea) lost balance, and fell to the floor. Rory neither noticed nor cared. She yanked on the fitted blank tank top that accentuated the smallness of her torso, the delicacy of her bones. She never stopped to notice things like this that her lover could see from behind the thick glass of the window. In a rush, Rory lifted the bottom half of it up, exposing the outside world. Where there was Dean.

His face was white as chalk, his strong lips quivering. He didn't speak, and Rory didn't know what to say. But she knew what to do. She looked longingly into Dean's troubled face that was too young for such worries. A mirror of her own. She pressed her lips together definitively, and shut the window, before flying out of the house. Lorelai's cries of "Fire! Fire!" were ignored, taken as the sarcastic silliness that they were. Rory thought of nothing else but Dean.

She caught up with Dean as he finished crossing her front lawn. His back was to her, his hands in his pockets, the extra fabric of his t-shirt billowing in the wind.

"Dean!" she cried. _Come back, come back._

He heard her. Dean stalled his steps as they reached the street, exhaled and turned around. Rory approached him carefully. His brown eyes flickered with pain.

"I..." Rory faltered. "I wasn't turning you away, I just... my mom is in the house and I thought I should talk to you where only you can hear me, I... Dean?"

Breathless, she waited for him to speak. Her life hung on his answer.

He parted his lips. "Okay."

Rory nodded uneasily. Then they were as still as porcelain miniatures. Sitting on a shelf, both staring at nothing. It seemed so much time passed, so very many seconds.

Dean tried to smile. It came out as such a weak gesture.

So tenderly, he took Rory's hand. Together they walked, without a word, to Dean and Lindsay's house.

--

Rory had driven down this street many times just for the sake of passing by something familiar. Everything in this town was familiar, but this street held a building that held a person worth remembering. A memory of first love worth revisiting. It was painful, and it was permanent, and it was gorgeous, and it rocked her world. Now she stood in the middle of this street, facing Dean's doorway, with him by her side. The quiet around them drew no thoughts from her, whether it was a good or a bad thing. There were things that could have, and probably should have been said. And there were things that would be said now, but what order and what way they would come out, and what the result would be... nobody could know. For now, the task was simply standing in the street, side-by-side with the ally of her life.

"I've been meaning to re-paint the house." She didn't look at Dean as or after he said these words. And she didn't need to question why his tone was so strange.

"Oh." She continued to stare straight ahead. "What color?"

"Shades of green... I have them all picked out." Soft voice; soft man voice that was Dean.

"Oh."

Silence stretched for a millisecond or two, and then Rory unclasped their hands. It was time to let Dean go.

"I'm going in alone," he promised, "But I'd like it if you would be here. After..."

After.

"There's a window on the side of the house over there. Where you can watch, if you want to." Dean's voice faltered, but then found life again. "Maybe you should. Maybe it's better if you see."

No more words spoken. Time for action now. Dean left the street, and left Rory's side, on his way to his own front door. Did it still feel like his? she wondered. Would it still after this? She took her own action - - she hurried to the side of the house, hiding among the bushes as she peeked in the window, the dirty glass separating her from this scene where perhaps it wasn't her place to eavesdrop. But still, she would. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was bad. But after entering the cycle she was now caught up in, maybe one more bad thing wouldn't make a difference. Maybe it was all she could do anymore, and maybe that meant it didn't matter.

So unsure of herself, Rory looked in the window, her eyes searching for Lindsay. She could see a small dining table, and beyond that, the living room, no wall separating between. Just linoleum turning to carpet. There was a small couch, its back facing Rory, dark, dark blue with some small design peppering it that she couldn't quite make out. It didn't look new, and she wasn't surprised.

Dean must have been composing himself before he opened the front door. When he did, he seemed so unsure of what we wanted to do. The door swung open, and in he stepped, and out he bailed, and in he stepped again. Tentatively, he planted his feet on the carpet inside and closed the door behind him, sealing him in. There was no stopping this now.

He opened his mouth and spoke. Rory couldn't hear anything, and took that as a blessing.

Mere seconds later, Lindsay came storming into the living room from someplace beyond Rory's sight. From some back room that she didn't care to see. Without a second's pause, she raised her hand and slapped Dean right across the face! As a reflex, his head turned to the side; immediately he righted himself, just in time for another blow. There was now one pink splotch on his cheek due to two separate slams. Rory meant to gasp, but it was swallowed before it came out, and she merely looked on in silence, feeling just sick.

The window was dirty. The wind that kept enveloping the town on this day from time to time had obviously spread some dirt from the yard onto the glass that might have otherwise been meticulously cleaned. Rory didn't want it to be. She didn't want the window to look perfect as she looked into a perfect household that held the perfect wife. There had to be a reason to justify why Dean did what he did, and there had to be something to give her mind peace after knowing that what Dean did, she did, too. Though the window was dirty, she found no real fault in Dean's wife as she stared at a Dean who looked so beaten down, so sad. He seemed lonely standing there all by himself, up against the one who had done no wrong. Rory felt she deserved one of the slaps he had so valiantly taken.

Dean's lips were moving periodically, but it was obvious that he wasn't really trying to defend himself. Obviously Lindsay had known something from the moment he walked in that door, for he hadn't uttered a word between the original call he gave out and Lindsay's attack. But he was talking now, being interrupted many a time by a hysterical wife. Her face was just as red as the splotch she had created as she flailed her arms and just seemed to **scream**. She said this, and she said that - - she yelled, from the looks of the effort, and Dean, he just stood there and took it, seeming to offer a little bit of nothing to the conversation from time to time.

Rory felt like an intruder, not only on this conversation, but on both of their lives.

Suddenly Lindsay was crying; tears were streaking her face. She pushed at Dean's chest ineffectually, sinking down into a crumbled ball on the floor, looking all the same as a two year-old denied their current desire. Except this was a real problem. Dean deserved to see these tears. He hadn't meant to hurt her, but he had done it just the same.

Lindsay's shoulders and back heaved with her sobs. Her perfect blonde hair spread across the carpet. Dean brought a hand to his mouth as though thinking Rory's very same thought: _What have I done?_ He appeared to sob himself; his shoulders quivered. Rory pressed her lips together, and bowed her head. She had seen enough.

Her body was numb as she left her hiding place, feeling as though she had been playing the snitch to herself. Her limbs didn't want to coordinate as she made her way out to the sidewalk. She didn't even have the presence of mind to steer clear of the front of Dean's house. She just... stood there. Facing nothing. Feeling everything all at once.

She didn't have to stand there long alone. The front door behind the lawn her back was facing reluctantly shut, but the latch was a loud _boom_. A gunshot wound to the traitorous hearts that now stood in battle. Before she could recover, there was a presence beside her, and Dean gently grabbed her elbow, and steered her away from the house. They only got as far as the other side of the street before his already slow steps stalled and he began to speak. His voice was so strange, as if somehow in there Lindsay had drained all the life out of it. Maybe that was what he deserved.

"I waited until this morning to tell Lindsay..." he began, and then stopped. Air escaped his mouth as if to signify frustration in not being able to find the words to articulate what he needed to be saying. "And even then I wasn't ready.

"I wanted it to come out so right, but... God, I messed it up." He faltered again.

Luckily, Rory's mouth was ready: "Fuck," she threw out. Then both she and Dean blinked their eyes in shock. She had never uttered such a word before. It just wasn't in her vocabulary from day one. It exploded out of her mouth before the thought could form in her brain, before she could analyze it and proof-read it, scan it till she was sure it made sense. And now her brain was seriously confused. She had no idea what to do. "I - - I mean..." she stuttered, "something else."

Brilliant.

"Okay, I need to sit down," she said, dropping to her knees and then taking a seat on the grass in front of her. She was now on the lawn of some random strangers directly across the street from where she didn't want to be seen. There were too many things to think of at the moment. Basic necessities were forgotten.

Dean sighed, and made his way to the curb where he surrendered, sitting on the cement, his feet in the gutter.

Rory somehow managed to will her limbs to move as she desired; she came and sat next to him.

In a moment of clarity, Rory raised her head and stared right in front of her. "What if she looks out the window?"

"She won't," said Dean in his robot voice.

"What if she does?"

"Then we'll both die, on the spot." Dean was in no mood to talk. Nor to get up and move.

Rory clasped her hands around her twin bent knees. She saw a scar she'd had since childhood and wanted to point it out. Just to take the transfixed agony and sprinkle powdered sugar on top. "You see that?" she asked, placing her finger on the ugly mark that, thank Neosporin, had faded considerably since it was first placed.

Dean's eyes flicked over to it and he grunted his response.

Rory told Dean that she suffered such a scarring from trying to ride a bike. And suddenly she was remembering something that hadn't entered her mind for years.

(Rory had fallen in a tumble to the ground. Lorelai had been so quick to quip. "I can't wait till you start driving." Rory had rolled her eyes in an attempt to keep the tears from falling.

"I'll have to hide the keys," said Lorelai. "But then they'd probably hide from me, too. Metal little buggers. I am officially going to become one of those annoying perky people who weigh their keys down with twenty-five keychains. I'll win an award. 'Gaudiest Keys in Stars Hollow'. Though knowing this town, my reward will probably be another keychain.

"I was in some kind of thrift store once," Lorelai had continued, as if this was the opportune time to chat. About anything. "Looking at crap that nobody wants, but they buy it, anyway. Because it's so tempting to show said crap to other people, so you can say, 'Look how stupid this is. I was stupid enough to buy it.'" Right, because that's something to brag about. "And thus, other innocent people are infected with the knowledge that such an object exists.

"I was merely trying to entertain myself while you were resembling the bookworm that you are way at the other end of the store. You see, you've always been weird like that. I have no idea how you got that way. Other kids would ask for pop star posters, but not you. No, you wanted Harvard handbooks. With no fingerprints on the cover until your own fingers touched the surface. So weird...

"Oh, oh, okay. I remember the point of this story. I'll say it fast before I lose the memory, 'cause, you know, that could happen. So, I got to the keychains section. And there was this keychain that was a small box, with Michael Jackson on it. And when I pushed a button, it played 'Thriller'. ...Somewhere, someone in the world is just dying to have been there... But I'm guessing that person's not you, from the look on your face."

Rory was quick with her outburst, the only thing she wanted to be said: "You said you wouldn't let go, and you did!"

Lorelai looked down at the bike sprawled across the pavement. "Yeah, well, I didn't want to be a back seat driver."

"There is no back seat!"

"Oops, I overlooked that." Rory's eyes showed no mercy. "I promise that I'll never, ever do that again."

"Your promises aren't any good," Rory fired. Very rarely had she ever been this mad.

"Yeah, that's true."

"Swear you won't do it again," Rory said with such intensity, it was scary.

"Do what?"

"Mom!"

"I just wanted to be clear. Promises are a big commitment. I've got to be able to size up my odds."

Ignoring her, Rory continued, "You won't let go. Swear."

"I swear on..."

Rory sat back, thinking. "Pop Tarts. Say that if you break this promise, you'll never eat a Pop Tart again."

"Whoa. Nobody's capable of that kind of commitment." Lorelai gasped. "I can feel the sugar degradation already." She clutched at her heart in an exaggerated way. "What if I sneak one behind your back? Why am I telling you my secret deeds yet to be done?")

"Did she swear?" Rory snapped out of her reverie at those words from Dean. Quickly, she recovered.

"With a little bribery, yes."

"Did she let go again?" Dean pressed, curious with caution.

"Yes," Rory answered without pause, as was the Gilmore way.

"Does she eat the forbidden fruit to this day?"

"You know my mother."

"That I do."

Anxiously Rory cleared her throat, letting go of her clasped knees, taking her eyes from the bike wound born so long ago. She was quite suddenly back in the here-and-now, just where she didn't want to be. God, if only there were a way to escape... But there was no escaping this. Not for any of them. Not for the rest of their lives.

She didn't dare take a glance at Dean.

Silence became their partner, and it stretched as though it hadn't stretched in years, as if it had been a faithful Yoga practicer who had quit some time ago cold turkey.

"She already knew," Dean finally muttered, lifting his head from where it sat hanging low near his bent knees. He stared forward, past his house, it seemed. His eyes weren't focused anywhere. Rory knew because she looked. She just had to look at him right now; it was so hard to keep forcing herself to look away. He was where her eyes wanted to be.

"Lindsay," he clarified. "She already knew." More silence, and then, "She told me my parents called her this morning, before I could get to her." It was so hard for him to force these words out, and it was obvious that every syllable he choked out caused him great pain. "I knew they were mad, but... They sold me out. ...I knew I shouldn't have gone to them first. But I thought they would understand - - well, not really, but I hoped they would try."

Rory made a mental note to stay clear of Dean's parents' house from now until eternity was over.

Dean's words sank into mumbling as he looked down once again, focusing those tortured eyes of his on his worn tennis shoes. "They were so disappointed in me, Rory. That's all they could say. My mother looked at me, and... she said she didn't recognize me. That she didn't know how, and she couldn't believe, that a son of hers would do something like this. She started crying, and she snapped that she wished I had never told her, that she had never known what a horrible person I would turn out to be."

There were no words to say. "She was probably just in shock... she was upset," Rory found.

"She was upset, but she still said it." Dean heaved a big sigh. "She said it, and I'll remember it the rest of my life."

Rory's voice was so sad; it reflected so well the color of her insides. "I wish I could have saved you from it... And from Lindsay..." She bit her lip, hard, daring it to draw blood, and smear her face with her pain. "It was hard watching you in there with her. ...I'm sorry you cried."

"I did not cry." Dean exhaled through his nose. "I don't cry, I'm not like that."

Rory looked at him, and after a moment she looked away. She had seen the lone tear slip from his cheek as he stood quivering in front of his wife. She had watched it fall to the ground, the weight of its wetness drawing it downwards to take passage with his soul that seemed to drain to his feet. She didn't call him on it, but she knew. She knew now that she wasn't overreacting. She knew now that in her grief she was not alone.

A stray food wrapper went tumbling by in the breeze. Seconds later, hurried footsteps sounded from down the street. Panting from exhaustion, Kirk came running, his hand outstretched as if reaching for something that just wouldn't be caught. "Taylor's assigned me to litter duty this week!" he somehow managed to get out, breathing hard, his shirt soaked with sweat, tiny beads at his hairline, a few running in streaks down his reddened face.

And Rory remembered, Taylor bringing that problem up in the last town meeting. Too much trash on these streets that should be at all times kept squeaky clean. His tone was so menacing, nothing new, just something to be commented upon: "You people should be ashamed of yourselves."

"Sorry," Kirk had muttered. The crowd had paid him no attention; he was as insignificant to them as ever.

"I've got to get it!" yelled the Kirk running through the street. "Did you see which way it went?"

Wordlessly and with hardly an upward glance, both Rory and Dean pointed to their right, the direction the wind had blown. It picked up again and so Kirk, without a stop to rest, continued on his desperate journey. He really was committed to any job he undertook.

"If you see any litter, call me! I can pick it up and dispose of it in the correct way!" yelled Kirk as he sprinted on. In and out came his harshly drawn breaths. No answer came as he disappeared, both witnesses ignoring him as if he were a part of the scenery. As was the story of his life.

Rory felt absolutely sick as she contemplated her next move. She didn't want another minute to pass. She'd prefer it if time just stopped until she could get it together enough to move on. But the seconds just kept ticking. She could tell by the birds that just kept chirping.

Rory sighed. "Dean..." She touched his shoulder lightly. It was as if they were afraid to exert any amount of force on one another's bodies. As if by doing any more than tentatively resting fingers, they would create another disaster. "I have to go in there."

Dean groaned. "What? Where?"

"I have to talk to Lindsay."

"No, no, Rory, you don't want to do that," Dean so quickly interjected. "Lindsay is... lethal right now."

"I know. I saw."

Dean pressed his lips together so tightly they turned nearly white with the strain. "Right. Well. Don't. Don't go, Rory. You can't."

"You know I don't want to... But Dean, I did this, too. I owe her something."

"There's nothing you can say, Rory, nothing you can do. What we did is out. Pretty soon it will be all over town. Everyone's going to hate us, me especially - - they'll be lenient on you, they adore you. But me... I'm gonna be ground into the asphalt. Taylor's gonna throw all the collected litter on me."

"That's not true, Kirk will never collect any," Rory tried innocently. "Come on, seriously, you've seen him run."

Dean sighed. "That's not the point."

"I'm going," announced Rory, getting to her feet and striding toward her destination before she could really think about it and therefore stall. She had no idea what she was doing, no idea what she could possibly say. All she knew was that she owed it to Lindsay... and maybe to herself... to at least feel the situation out on her own. She rightfully deserved one of those stinging slaps Dean suffered. She rationed that not being ready for it didn't matter. There was no rationing this. There was no rational thought. There was just the pacing of her feet that with every step brought her closer to this house that she had tried so hard to avoid for so many recent days.

"Rory, no!" Dean had sprung to his feet behind her. "Stop! Rory! Don't do this!"

"Dean, I have to," Rory threw over her shoulder. And then... she was there. A doorstep had never looked so grim, but upon it she stood. Suddenly tentative, she looked over her shoulder again. "Dean, you don't have to stay. In fact... maybe you should go."

He kicked a stray stone and sent it skittering a-mile-an-hour. "Rory..." His shoulders slumped. "Please."

She swallowed over a sour lump in her throat. She looked at Dean, with that pleading gleam in his eyes, and suddenly she lost her nerve.

"Okay." Rory gave in. "Some other time." She could see the relief on Dean's face, though it seemed too difficult to smile. He began walking away, and she trailed behind him, counting their steps as they hit a unison stride.

- -  
to be continued...


	6. Emily

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Oh, please! I need it like the Gilmores need coffee! This is my first multiple chapter story, so anything you have to say would be much appreciated.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Thanks: Thank you to Elyssa for beta reading this for me.  
Special Note: Eternal thanks to Dulcey and Meredith for your wonderful feedback. I am so grateful to know that someone is reading and enjoying this story. I hope to keep up to your standards.

**Chapter 5: Emily**

- -  
_She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue._

Blue, like the lining of the plates that stretched on into gold edging.

"It's Friday," announced Emily, picking at her meat with a fork.

"Hence why we're here," Lorelai pointed out.

"Why does it feel like it was just Thursday?"

"Well, Mom, it was just Thursday. Yesterday."

"Yes, but it feels like a Thursday today."

"We could call it Thursday," suggested Rory, trying to politely enjoy the meat that her grandmother seemed to be wary of. ...What ever kind of meat it was.

"Well if we called it Thursday then technically you girls wouldn't be here." Emily's reasoning lately didn't tend to run that close to actual reason. "You would be here uninvited."

"I love to be uninvited," said Lorelai. "I plan on refusing to invite myself to my own wedding."

"What wedding?" Emily was tired.

"The one you are not invited to, either."

"Well I'll mourn the loss."

"Good one, Mom."

Emily gave up on the mystery meat and pushed her plate away. "This dinner is vile. I refuse to eat another bite of it."

"I'll eat it," Lorelai offered.

"Nonsense, you aren't even finished with yours."

Lorelai's fork snagged up the remaining three pieces of food on her plate and quickly she shoved them into her mouth. She made a thing out of swallowing it all quick as she could as her mother and daughter looked on.

Rory's face was disgusted. "How can you eat that, Mom? No offense, Grandma."

"None taken," said Emily easily. "Erica is officially fired."

Lorelai swallowed the food in her mouth. "Hey, Mom, do you think it's possible that you've fired the same maid more than once? By now you must have had to rehire ones you had already disposed of, considering you've swept through the entire working force of Hartford."

"I have fired more than one woman with the same name, that's for sure," Emily admitted thoughtfully. "All of their names seem to run together. Alison... Abby... Samantha..."

Lorelai began to reach for her mother's plate. "Mom, those names are all radically different."

"They all have that 'aah' sound," Rory pointed out. "In Grandma's defense."

"Why are you defending her?" Lorelai wanted to know. "You should always know to be on my side."

"Point well taken."

"Why are you just talking to each other as if I'm not here?" Emily cut in. "Where is Erica? Erica, bring in the dessert!" she yelled. She turned back to her guests. "You just don't know the dilemma I had this week of choosing tonight's dessert. I wanted banana splits, just for something fun and different, but then I remembered that Lorelai didn't like bananas..."

"I like bananas," said Lorelai firmly.

"Oh. Well then who doesn't like bananas? Rory, do you like bananas?"

"That I do."

"Who doesn't like bananas?" Now Emily was not only confused but determined to find out the answer.

"Dad..." Lorelai cleared her throat. "Dad doesn't like bananas, Mom."

Emily sat back, resigned. "Oh."

All three turned to stare at the empty seat down the table. Perfectly upholstered chair set three inches from the edge of the table, majestic and lacking a body to support. Those present at the table became sad for the gap in their group. Emily became most sad of all.

"Yes. Well," Emily said, needing to begin a conversation again. "Looks like we'll have banana splits next week then, if all accounted for seem to enjoy bananas."

"And sprinkles," Lorelai put in. Her face became stone-serious, "Rainbow, not chocolate."

"Good quote, bad movie," said Rory.

"What movie would that be?" Emily asked.

"The one where Winona Ryder goes crazy," said Lorelai.

Emily shifted in her seat. "Well she didn't need a movie to get that across."

Forks made small "tinkling" sounds against plates for a few minutes following. Lorelai kept motioning to Rory, and pointing to her mother, who sat looking so down and disappointed. It was like how a stoner would look at an expensive bong that she couldn't have, thought Lorelai. Rory kept shrugging or looking away, pretending not to notice her mother's insistent nudges.

"Mom," Lorelai said, clearing her throat, "now that we've reminded you of Dad, uh... Rory has some other great news."

"More great news? I don't think I could stand it." Emily's attempt at sarcasm was duly noted.

Silence just kept on coming, and it was driving Lorelai crazy. She and Rory had discussed it, they had to tell Emily tonight. It was only the right thing to do, to tell her what was happening the first Friday after it... began happening. But Rory wasn't so excited about their bargain. Lorelai had bribed her by offering to file all of Rory's summer reading books in a new and comprehensive way if she would just tell her grandmother her wonderful news. And Rory had grudgingly agreed at the time, but now...

"It's something great," said Lorelai finally. "Something **good**. You're going to be so shocked, I think the taste of this 'meat' will be wiped from your taste buds."

"Really? Well, if it's that great then out with it," said Emily, folding her hands together beneath her chin, propping her head up just so. It was impolite to place her elbows on the table, but she did so anyway. What did she care at this moment? Her husband was gone, her daughter was acting like herself, and now there was some sort of bomb threat news about to hit her. "This is about Rory. How bad could it be." She turned to Lorelai. "Is it something that even you disapprove of, Lorelai?"

"Yes, I've disowned her," said Lorelai. She turned to Rory. "Rory, I no longer own you."

"Good to know," said her daughter.

Lorelai paused. "So, do I get a refund?"

"There are no pockets in this dress," Rory reasoned. "I have no money on me."

"I plan to hold it over your head, then, until I get my due."

"You're such a loan shark."

"I can sure bite like one."

Emily was watching all of this with little interest and much eye rolling. "You should see a psychiatrist, Lorelai."

Lorelai had grabbed her mother's plate and didn't stop eating or looking at her food. In a distracted voice, she asked, "Why?"

"Well if you knew, that would make it so much easier, wouldn't it?"

Lorelai kept picking at her food. "What?"

Emily turned to the girl she would prefer to be talking to. "Rory, what is it? What is this big secret you're afraid or ashamed to tell me?"

"On second thought - - " Lorelai stuck in, suddenly paying attention " - - maybe you shouldn't tell her just yet, Rory. Maybe we should just keep holding it over her head for the sake of her own sanity. I think we need to warm up our voices a bit more before spilling the beans."

Emily was growing increasingly impatient. She wanted to know. "I think I can handle it."

Lorelai put down her fork and finished chewing her food, wincing because it was now almost cold. "It could be something so catastrophic it would leave you scarred for life. So bad that you'd resemble Zazu."

"Who is Zazu?" Emily asked, realizing as always that it might be better if she didn't know, but the words had already come out and there was no stopping their answer.

"Bird. Depressed. 'The Lion King'," Lorelai explained while Rory looked on with her mouth slightly agape, working at summoning her courage and trying to will her mother not to make things worse before they got started.

Emily stared at Lorelai. No recognition. Nothing.

Lorelai continued: "He even has a song."

"Oh dear God, please don't tell me you're going to sing it," said Emily.

Rory bit her lip. _Jump in any time_, was the message she was receiving.

Sing it Lorelai did, exaggerating her words for dramatic effect. "Nnnnoooobody knows the trouble I've seen..." She glanced at Rory and continued. "Nnnoooobody knows my sorrow..."

Emily cut her off. "You really do need to see some kind of health professional."

"'Health professional'?" Lorelai asked, ceasing her singing. "What are you, a psychologist?"

"Must you taunt me? I was only giving you friendly advice. You have issues."

"Sorry, **Dr. Gilmore**."

"Rory, reason with your mother - - "

"I'm pregnant." This is the way it always seemed to come out, rushed and un-timely and in a voice that betrayed it didn't know what it was saying. She got two stares turned her way for her mature outburst. "Grandma... I am."

There was so much silence.

Lorelai was about to claim she saw a tumbleweed enter the dining room when Emily burst out, **_"How could you let this happen, Lorelai?"_**

"Always my fault," Lorelai mumbled. "Quick, let's distract her, child! Rory, sing the Zazu song with me!"

Emily was fuming in silence.

Rory sat up straighter in her chair, all dignified. "I will not."

"Ditcher," Lorelai accused.

"What?"

"A ditcher. You ditched me. You left me dying, gasping for air between two slabs of cement."

"You look fine to me." Rory crossed her arms over her chest.

"Ditch-er. Look it up. Wow, I just sounded like Luke, didn't I?"

"I don't think that's a word," Rory put in.

"It is now."

"I see that."

"Look at me, all making up words." Lorelai, for one, was proud. But her pride had a small population that night.

"Lorelai, stop. I've had enough," said Emily firmly.

"I am adding words to the English language," explained Lorelai innocently.

"How wonderful," said Emily.

"Yes, it is. It really is."

Emily brought a hand to her forehead. "I think I'm getting a headache."

"Way to go, Mom," said Rory. "Should I applaud now or save that till later?"

"Just call me Somebody Webster."

"Obviously you have issues with silence," Emily cut in, irritated. "You barely acknowledge it exists."

"Excuse me, acknowledge what?"

"Rory..." Emily trailed off, and sighed, shaking her head. "While your mother is making up words, they are fading from my head. She must be grasping them from me, as if I were a bowl of dip."

"But there are no chips," Lorelai pointed out.

"Really, since when has that been a factor?" Emily asked, her voice dull and dreary.

"That's a good point, she eats the onion dip just off her fingers sometimes," said Rory.

"Tastes better that way," insisted Lorelai.

"You two can take nothing seriously. It's like 'Everybody Loves Raymond' in here." Emily was fed up, and deeply shocked, but the shock seemed to have buried itself deeply within her psyche because she couldn't seem to get to it just now. Her mind realized that she couldn't deal with it, and thus made it fade into the background, the delicate dining room décor. Oh well. At least it was a good color.

"I don't love Raymond," Rory said. "I felt like I should offer that to the conversation."

"Yeah, I don't love Raymond, either," Lorelai agreed. "Something about the nose."

"The nose is fine," Rory argued. "I think it's the voice."

"The voice is warped due to the nasal passages," reasoned Lorelai. "It all comes down to the nose."

Rory considered this. "All right, you win."

"I do." Lorelai smiled, pleased with herself. She looked at her mother, who sat stone-faced, her back rigid, her eyes focusing on something that wasn't there. Was she seeing the future baby falling off a diving board? "Mom, since when do you watch TV that other people know of, anyway? How are the 'Bet you'll get bored first' documentaries these days?"

"Who is the young man?" Emily asked quietly of Rory, without attempting to meet her eyes. "Is it a young man that's responsible? Is it a middle-aged man? Is it someone running from the law?"

"It's..." Rory paused and looked to Lorelai for help.

"Don't look at me, I've already done this," Lorelai said. "I had to go through it on my own and look, I'm still alive."

"Do you remember Dean?" Rory's voice was now becoming as quiet as Emily's. "It's... well, it's Dean's."

"The boy from your town. I didn't know you were with him."

"I wasn't, I - - "

"I think you've said enough," said Lorelai with false cheer. "Bring on the bananas!"

"Is this why you chose not to go to Europe with me this summer, Rory? Is it because of this boy?"

"Kind of... Yeah. I'm sorry, Grandma, but we've started something together..."

"Obviously." Emily was displeased, but wasn't sure how to show it or even if she should. This wasn't Lorelai, after all, this was Rory. A much more delicate flower. She couldn't take the same kinds of harsh judgments and still walk away with her head high. She needed understanding... and if only Emily could grasp some understanding, she would give it to her. But... "Lorelai, where were you when these two were making this child? They're still children themselves, for God's sake!"

"I was making the popcorn. They started the show early."

"Oh dear God, now I really do have a headache."

Erica, the maid, brought in their plates of dessert. Rory felt just sick. Lorelai seemed to be the only one interested in the food, and chose to dig right in to her slice of angel food cake while her mother and daughter had joint heart attacks.

"Leave." It came and went in such a heartbeat, the ache of it dulling out the drums in Rory's veins. She looked questioningly at her grandmother, as did Lorelai, who put down her fork and doubled the stare. "Please," continued Emily, "just leave."

--

Rory closed the front door behind she and Lorelai. Neither of them knew if the invitation for next Friday night dinner was still open or not. But it hadn't been the time to ask. Quietly, they had gotten up from the table, pushed their chairs in, and gone out the front door, leaving Emily to sit in her silence and contemplate with the lace-white cake her companion.

As they got into the car they had come in together, Lorelai sighed. "Could anything else go wrong? Could we have anything more colossal drop on our heads?"

Rory sat in silent contemplation. Lorelai started the car, and revved the engine. Oh, right, Rory knew the answer now to the question. "I invited Dean to move in."

- -  
to be continued...


	7. Sizzlin' Stars Hollow

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Oh, please! I need it like the Gilmores need coffee! This is my first multiple chapter story, so anything you have to say would be much appreciated.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Beta: Elyssa, could you email me, please? I lost your address when my computer crashed.  
Author's Note: I have got to thank all of you for your wonderful, heartfelt reviews. I may not have a lot of reviews, but their quality is stunning. Seriously, I nearly started to cry, I was so touched that other people care about this story. My excuse for taking so long in updating is that my computer crashed and I lost everything in it, including all of my writing. All I have left is what is already on the internet, and everything else must be re-written. Also, I have a new email address, so please email me at behrbemine at from now on. And thank you, just... thank you. Enjoy.

**Chapter Six: Sizzlin' Stars Hollow**

- -  
_She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue._

Blue, like the tears she saw glistening in Dean's eyes as Rory woke up next to him the following morning. What a mess of a debate it had been in order to have him stay here, at the crapshack. Lorelai had been so reluctant, but Dean's own parents had kicked him out before even letting him move back in, and surely he needed one parent to look after him now that he would have to learn to look after a child.

"Why can't you give him the love you've given me?" Rory had asked quite plainly. "He's all alone now. Please, just... let him stay."

"Fine, he can burn a hole in the couch. But you two behave yourselves. Be the adults I'm treating you as." Lorelai nodded, liking her advice. "You'll grow up fast now, the both of you. I guess it's good that you'll grow together."

Not wanting Dean to sleep on his own his first night in her house, Rory had set up camp on the floor beside the couch, after moving some furniture to a corner of the living room. There, Dean and she slept, side-by-side, on the floor, cushioned by a thin blanket, and covered in a virgin white sheet.

Waking up this morning, seeing those tears, Rory asked Dean what was wrong.

"Nothing..." he said, "...Everything." He paused. "I have no idea."

"Welcome to my world," Rory said. Everything in her life had just been spiraling down and down some more for what seemed like the longest time, but in reality was little more than a week. "Are you working today?"

"No, I have the day off. I had to bribe Taylor, but I'm off."

"Bribe him with what?"

"I told him I'd reorganize the bread aisle. He says it's a mess, and that I've been doing a bad job of stacking it all. I offered to do it over again."

"Wow. You really do get into your job."

"Hey, if the money's good..." Dean smiled.

"**Is** the money good?" Rory asked.

Dean shrugged. "I get by."

Rory paused. She looked down at her pink pajama pants and white top with spaghetti straps. She thought about how if it weren't for Lorelai being just upstairs, she would start to take them off. Instead, she reached out a hand to cup Dean's cheek, and said, "I love you."

"Me too," said Dean. "More than you know."

--

That morning, Dean and Rory went for a walk through town. Rory tentatively took Dean's hand, ready for him to pull back, away from her, for fear of Lindsay, and what everyone would say. But he squeezed her hand and held it to his tightly. He did love her. He did.

As they arrived at the center of town near the gazebo, they saw a crowd gathered around Kirk who was shouting something. "Stars Hollow, 'Sizzlin' Stars Hollow', get your copy, see the news. Make fun of other people. It's sizzlin'!"

Babette had a magazine in her hands that she was slowly skimming. She looked up when she saw Rory and Dean approach the crowd. "So it is true..." she breathed.

"What is true?" asked Rory, reaching for a magazine from Kirk's hands.

"First issue is free," said Kirk. "Especially for you," he said, looking right at Rory. "Our leading lady."

The magazine was a poorly articulated sort of scrapbook in the form of a tabloid. Very sloppily and unprofessionally done. 'Sizzlin' Stars Hollow', it was called. Issue one. On the cover was a picture of Taylor's ice cream shop and the question posed was, "Is the ice cream made from real dairy? Are there even cows involved?"

Rory looked at Dean who shook his head. "This is ridiculous," he said. Rory shared his opinion. And then she opened the magazine.

On page three, there was a familiar scene. Dean hugging Rory in Doose's Market. The caption read: "Town angel with child? Soothed by the bad bagboy, the father?" Below the caption was a short article articulating the conversation the two had had earlier in the week. Someone had been spying. The article even mentioned that Rory didn't like peas.

"What... what is this? Why... Kirk, who wrote this?" asked Rory, struggling to come up with words.

"I am not at liberty to say."

"Who was spying on us?"

"I am not at liberty to say."

"Can I kick you?"

"I am not at liberty to... hey!"

"If she doesn't do it, I will," Dean said firmly, grinding his free hand into a fist. "Tell us who wrote this piece of crap."

"My sources are silent. I am not at..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Dean waved him off. Still holding onto Rory's hand, he quickly led her away from the scene.

Babette came running after them. "But it's true, then? It's true? Oh, baby doll..." She put a hand to Rory's shoulder to stop her from walking away, and pulled her into an embrace. "Who else knows?"

"Well, the whole town now," Rory said dryly. In all likelihood that was true.

"How far along are you?"

"I don't..."

"She doesn't want to talk about it," Dean said, not unkindly, but in a way that stated he didn't want to talk about it, either. "As you can understand, we're both in a bit of shock here."

"God, if only I hadn't blurted it out in such a public place..." Rory frowned, and hated herself. She wrapped her arms around her little body. The summer air was warm on her face and her abdomen. She felt tears brimming in her eyes. "Why, Dean? Why was I so stupid?"

"Oh, angel..." said Babette, pulling Rory into her arms again.

"Rory!" yelled Miss Patty, huffing and puffing to get to her. She threw her arms around both Rory and Babette, and then yanked Dean into the hug by his t-shirt. They shared a group embrace, and Rory's tears started to fall. When they did, it was like a chain reaction. Before she knew it, Babette was sniffling and Miss Patty was sobbing openly. "It's just like Lorelai," said Miss Patty. "Who would've known?"

"She, um, she doesn't, um... She's not ready to talk about it," Dean said weakly, currently being crushed into Miss Patty's chest. His voice almost sounded muffled. "And neither am I."

"Stars Hollow! 'Sizzlin' Stars Hollow'!" Kirk continued to yell, like a popcorn seller at a baseball game. "Read trash about people you used to admire. Step right up!"

"Kirk, shut up!" said Rory, frustrated, and pulling out of everyone's embrace. Some seconds she felt like being alone; others, she was afraid to. "Come on, Dean." She took his hand again and they headed away from the gazebo where more and more of the Stars Hollow crowd were gathering to gawk and stare at her. She meant so much to them. She was the picture of innocence, the picture of porcelain, the picture of perfection. The little girl who would one day go to Harvard, that's what she had always been to them. Not the teenage girl who would repeat her mother's mistakes. Especially because she was nothing like her mother when it came to men. At least, not until now.

"When I come back, those papers had better all be in the trash!" Dean threatened, turning his head as he walked forward with Rory. "Throw them away, Kirk! Do the right thing."

"I am not at liberty to do so without consent. From the author. Of the tabloid. I'm not allowed."

Dean shot him a menacing glare that made Kirk swallow deeply. Shaking his head, Dean faced forward again, and tugged Rory toward Luke's diner. There, they could examine the contents of the "magazine" more thoroughly and get a handle on just what everyone now knew. As usual, the whole town was buzzing about something that was absolutely none of their business. But there was no shutting any of them up. The secret was out now. She was going to have a baby. No doubt it would become the most beloved baby in the state. Not much news of any juicy nature ever made its way into this town, so that when it did, its occupants became a cluster of vultures, attacking and shredding flesh. It's true that everyone cared, and only meant the best, but they didn't understand the pain of their intrusion on someone's private life. Though Rory had come to learn that in a town like this, nothing stays private for long. And now she had proof.

Walking into the diner, Dean led Rory to her favorite table, holding the seat out for her. "Hmm, nice service," she said politely, sitting down. "Thank you, sir."

"Certainly, Madame. Now... where's my tip?" Dean raised his eyebrow playfully.

"Don't eat yellow snow."

Dean gave what could be described as a stifled giggle before settling in the chair opposite Rory's. "See, I knew there was a smile left in there somewhere."

Rory looked down, her long lashes beautiful against her oh-so-white skin.

"Rory," said Dean, bending down so that he was at eye level, if only she would raise her eyes. "It's going to be okay. Everyone would have found out eventually. This isn't the disaster you're making it to be. And it wasn't your fault. You were distressed, you couldn't help but to blurt it out."

"I can't believe you're not more worked up over this," she said with a sniffle.

As Dean's clenched fists tightened beneath the table, he refused to admit just how worked up he was being. "We've just... got to let it go, that's all."

Rory finally looked up. "If you tighten your jaw any more, it might break."

Dean smiled at her gratefully. "So you're okay? We can talk?"

"We can talk."

Dean cleared his throat. "Well, then, let's see who else got photographed in such a flattering light." He opened up the tabloid and held it up in front of him, like a newspaper. He was skimming the fifteen pages when Luke arrived at their table to take their order. He looked at Dean so strangely. After a moment of awkward silence, Dean realized he was being stared at and lowered the magazine so his eyes could meet the other man's gaze.

"So, how's the wife?" Luke asked.

Dean glanced at Rory. "I don't know." He looked back at Luke. "Do you know something?"

"Should I know something?"

"Do you think you should?"

"Do you think I should think I should?"

Rory rolled her eyes. "I'll have two eggs, scrambled, with crumbled cheese on top; two strips of sausage, two strips of bacon, and a liter of coffee, please. Black."

Dean looked so nervous under Luke's stare. It was an innocent one, though, a sort of "I hate you, but I don't have a specific reason why" thing. Rory didn't think he knew about the... circumstances. She wanted to tell Dean to hide the tabloid magazine, but she couldn't speak right now. She was paralyzed by the fear of what Luke was going to do to Dean when he found out just what was going on.

"Got it, Rory," Luke said politely, scribbling something on his order pad. "And what about for the hoodlum here?"

"Hey, back off," Dean barked.

Luke rolled his eyes. "What's your order?"

"Orange juice."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Anything else, I might not be able to taste the poison you'd drop in."

"You're getting smarter. Definitely at a slower pace than the snails outside the door, but you're getting there," Luke acknowledged, his voice strange. It was as if, looking at Rory now with Dean sitting in front of her, he had to give the kid credit for being a decently honorable human being for, after all, if Rory approved of him, then so should the world. Nobody had better taste than Rory. Luke's eyes were calculating. They seemed to be trying to measure both Dean and Rory up, see what they were hiding. Rory figured he must not know about Dean moving in, or about the pregnancy. She didn't want to be the one to tell him. As nonchalantly as possible, she leaned over the table and turned the page in the magazine, so it was no longer showing the cover story. And there she stopped, in a dead freeze.

Oh, God, why did the world hate her? There was another confusion to confront. As Luke walked away, Rory swallowed her gasp, and then grabbed the magazine from Dean to stare, really stare at the picture in front of her eyes. Lorelai kissing Luke inside this very diner. The caption indicated that they were spotted here after hours last week when the picture was taken, and apparently they must have thought the darkness outside would keep them hidden, but the bright lighting in the restaurant begged to differ.

What was her mother doing kissing Luke? Which one of them should she ask about this first? She dropped the magazine, shaken. She wanted to tell Luke to hurry it up with the coffee, but all of a sudden she couldn't talk to him. She didn't know what to say.

Dean, trying to lighten the mood, started nudging her feet with one of his under the table. He smiled in a charming way as Rory met his eyes. "What you reading?" he asked playfully.

Any other time, she would've enjoyed a little game of footsie, but as it was, Rory turned the magazine around and gave it back to Dean, open to the page she had been eyeing. He sucked in his breath and shook his head. "Wow, bad day to be a Gilmore girl."

Rory nodded. "Or her boyfriend."

"Yeah..."

"Are you my boyfriend?"

"Of course. I'll be your anything."

Rory smiled. It was small, it didn't light up her eyes, but it helped.

"You know, Rory, the only way we can beat these people is to act like their gossip means nothing to us. To act like we have nothing to hide. Lindsay already knows, and now the town is aware of what they think is happening. We might as well shout it out to the world."

Rory exhaled, long and hard. Dean was right. What use was there in hiding this anymore?

"Hey, uh, waiter!" Dean called, waving a hand and smiling. "We've got a hungry pregnant lady here, awaiting her eggs."

The impact of that sentence sent Luke and the dishes in his hand crashing to the floor.

--

Rory didn't know what she was doing here. After breakfast, she and Dean parted because she needed some "alone time". And as she took her strides away from him, she just keep going, kept walking, until she reached Lindsay's house, the house where up until a couple of days ago, Dean had lived under the guise of happiness. A "happiness" that she had splintered in two. And the second half of that splinter stood somewhere beyond the front door. She knocked.

Rory could hear someone moving around inside the house. She could hear footsteps on the floor. She resisted looking in any of the windows, not wanting to be rude just because she was impatient.

Perhaps, she thought, she was here to tie up this loose end. After all, if the whole town now knew what was going on, she and Dean were going to be able to show themselves together in public. But she wanted Lindsay to know straight away that she was flaunting nothing, and that she was sorry, so terribly sorry.

Lindsay opened the door with a yawn. When she saw Rory, she jumped, looking startled, and placed a hand on her chest. Her face was ready to take on any emotion, and it seemed to be colliding with more than one. At first it looked like she was going to murder Rory, then it looked like she was going to cry, then it looked like she was confused, utterly, utterly lost.

Rory stepped forward and gave her a short hug. Confused, Lindsay did not reciprocate.

An awkward silence ensued.

Lindsay cleared her throat and chose a bitchy face to morph into. "You have something to say to me?"

"Right. Yeah." Pause. "I'm just not sure how."

Lindsay looked down, ready to state the obvious: "It has to do with Dean, doesn't it?"

"Well -- "

"I mean, he's the only thing we have in common, right?"

Rory nodded regretfully. "Right."

Lindsay's voice cooled down some. "Remember that time at the beginning of tenth grade, before you left, when you asked to borrow my favorite eraser?"

"Vaguely..." admitted Rory, frowning in confusion.

"It was my favorite, see. It was purple and neon green striped. It was brand new. You took it, and you never gave it back."

"I'm sorry."

"I just wanted to put a memory in your head to show that I don't flip out because of small things like that."

Rory nodded, but this was no small matter. "I wish all this had to do with was an eraser."

"So it's bigger than that."

"Yes," Rory said softly.

"I didn't hear you."

Rory cleared her throat, and spoke a bit louder: "Yes. Of course."

Lindsay stood at the entrance to her house, with a baggy t-shirt and jeans that made her legs look particularly slim. A gift from Dean. Back when he was hers. Which is the way it was always supposed to be. She seemed to be having difficulties staying calm. Finally, when Rory wouldn't speak further, Lindsay did. "How could you? How could you do this to me? I mean he's my husband, he was mine. And you've taken him from me. Sure, we had our problems, but now..." She broke down and began to cry. "You ruined everything."

Lindsay's sobs penetrated Rory's heart, and made her ache for what she had done, what she was still doing. What she would continue to do. Dean was hers now, no matter how she had gotten him. They fit together like final puzzle pieces. Dean was always meant to be with Rory. He wasn't ready to marry. But none of this mattered to the blonde girl in front of her whose throat was becoming raw from all the sobbing and the tears.

At last, Lindsay tried to compose herself. "If you had the chance to go back, would you do it again?"

"I wish I knew," Rory lied. She hated lying.

Appearing weak all of a sudden, Lindsay turned and walked inside the house, leaving the door open as if inviting Rory to come in and commiserate with her. Her enemy, being allowed onto Lindsay's turf. Lindsay sat down at the dining room table, cupping her face in her hands to muffle the sounds escaping her throat and capture her tears.

Having come in behind her, Rory sniffed the air. She could smell something burning in the kitchen. Feeling like she had to do something, she went and turned the oven off.

She returned to the dining room, on the verge of tears herself. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry... I'm sure Dean is, too."

Lindsay's head snapped up, and she hastily wiped away the tears on her face. "You know nothing about Dean."

"Well, then at least I'm sorry." Rory added her sobs to Lindsay's. "I mean, I never meant to do this to you!"

"Then, God, why didn't you stop?"

"Because I love him..." Rory's voice became very small. "I think I have always loved him."

"I hate you," Lindsay whispered, a tear sliding down her face.

Rory nodded. "I hate me, too."

Lindsay groaned. "Just go away. I can't be near you right now."

Indecision made Rory pause, but then her soft footsteps led her out of the dining room, away from the crying girl, a visual image of the marriage she had destroyed. She made her way out the front door and closed it behind her. Alone on Dean's old porch, she wiped away her tears. She was not the one who deserved to cry.

Rory then left the house and the broken girl inside who may never be whole again.

--

Dinner time came and went. Lindsay heard a tentative knock on her front door. When she opened it, there was no one there to stand under the porch light. She looked down, and there she saw a new purple and neon green eraser.

Picking it up, she turned around, gift in her hand, and closed the door behind her, leaving an empty porch for an empty girl.

- -  
to be continued...


	8. Fused Together

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Oh, please! I need it like the Gilmores need coffee! This is my first multiple chapter story, so anything you have to say would be much appreciated.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Beta: Elyssa, could you email me, please? I lost your address when my computer crashed.  
Author's Note: Thank you all, for being so generous and kind, and cheering me on. I am so warmed to know that you're enjoying this story. I hope you continue to enjoy it to its end.

**Chapter 7: Fused Together**

- -  
_She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue._

Blue, like the jeans covering both future mother and father's thighs.

"I want to come with you," Dean whined.

"Why?" Rory asked blandly, hardly glancing up from the magazine she had been reading for the last half hour. Rory took her time in reading anything. Magazines, books, brochures. She read them absolutely cover-to-cover. That way, she didn't miss a thing.

"Because," Dean said, "it's important. Not just to you, but to me, too." Gently he started pulling the magazine away from Rory's grasp, trying to get her to focus. "It's a life-defining moment for you. I want to be there. I think I deserve to be there."

"Fine, you can come, if it's that important to you. But really, it's nothing. I already took the home pregnancy test, now it's just a matter of getting some confirmation that I am indeed pregnant. We already know what the answer's going to be. The test I took was 99 percent accurate. How could this test with my doctor alter a thing?"

"You just never know," Dean mused, sort of jumping around in his seat.

"Okay, I must say, you are getting way too excited about this."

"What's not to be excited about? We've been on such an emotional low for what seems like so long. Even if it's only been, what? A few weeks?..."

Rory sighed, set the magazine down on the table, and smiled. "I'm also getting an ultrasound. I'm sure you'd want to be there for that."

"Really? Awesome." Dean was starting to come around on the idea of this pregnancy, almost to the point of accepting it. He even seemed excited about it, at times. Rory had noticed, but said nothing, not wanting to jinx the relationship her one true love was beginning to have with their unborn baby. Technically, though, was it even a baby yet, or simply a pool of goo? What did it matter as long as Dean was happy, and actually excited about something.

--

Dean whistled nervously as they awaited the doctor's arrival. The medical room was bland, seemed sterile. It was good to be clean, but this was a bit much. Dean reached over to the examining table that Rory occupied, swiping a finger along its side, looking for dust or dirt. There was none. Whoever cleaned this place was an expert. Maybe they could teach the Gilmore girls a little something called vacuuming.

"So..." he began, tired of the silence, the wait. "How come I can't see it yet? How come you're not showing that there's a baby in you?"

"Too soon," said Rory in a distracted way, sighing out of boredom. She was trying so hard to be nonchalant, as her stomach was twisting and untwisting in knots, contracting and letting go, over and over again. She wanted to pretend this day wouldn't be one of the most important yet of her life. That it wasn't such a big deal to have the confirmation that her life indeed would be changed from this moment on. She didn't want to face the consequences of either having a baby within her, or having nervous conclusions that were nothing but imaginary. She was afraid to be pregnant, and afraid to not.

Rory looked at Dean, sensing that he was also afraid. Although, above everything, he was annoyingly curious. His eyes were bright where hers were bleak. He seemed to be dusting the walls with his hands. She frowned. Was he trying to be annoying on purpose, or...?

At long last, the doctor walked in. Dr. Brown, whose name described the color of her skin, looked to be far older than Lorelai, perhaps even in her fifties. She smiled reassuringly at the two "adults" turned children before her. "And how are we doing today?" she asked kindly.

"Great," said Dean with a smile that almost seemed sincere. He wanted to believe they were great. He wanted to believe they weren't both ready to vomit. Certainly that couldn't be good for the baby.

Dr. Brown took a seat in front of Rory and Dean, and looked meaningfully at Rory. "We have examined the urine you brought in a few days ago, and we have found" -- heartbeat, beat, beat, Rory fluttered her eyelashes, feeling the suffocation of the heat around her closing in on her; time seemed to pass so slowly, when truly no time passed at all -- "that you are indeed pregnant."

Dean didn't know if he should raise his arms above him, Super bowl style, and scream, "Yes!" or if he should sulk quietly in his seat, disturbed by the responsibilities that lay ahead. In the end, he did nothing but stare, his jaw dropped, mouth open, looking very much like a toddler.

Rory released the breath she had been holding for weeks. "I am... I am."

"Yes." Dr. Brown smiled. "I'm not sure if that was what you were ready to hear, but oftentimes the home pregnancy tests are, indeed, correct. Good of you to check with us, however, as there is a one percent chance that it could have been off."

"Thought it was best to check..." Rory said, in a little girl voice, as she stared ahead at nothing in particular. She felt removed from the situation, as if she were looking at the grey snow of a broken TV. Sitting here, in this Hartford doctor's office, she was far from tears, very much like plastic, unfeeling, uncaring, unrevealing of what was inside.

Dean found a smile. "Thank you. For letting us know."

"It's my job," Dr. Brown said pleasantly with a shrug. Just then, a nurse came in, rolling equipment into the room on a crate. "And now, time for your ultrasound."

Rory was taking deep calming breaths, in and out. Dean, finished now with his dirt inspection, was fiddling with the hands in his lap. Both were awaiting what would come with a sickening amount of anticipation that felt like dread.

"Rory, if you'll just lay back now," Dr. Brown instructed. Rory situated herself evenly on the cushioned surface, and slowly leaned back until she was laying down in her thin, scratchy hospital garment. "That's right. Now, Dean, you can scoot your chair over to be with us so that you can see what's on the screen, too."

Dean scooted forward gratefully, letting his chair rest right next to where Rory was laying. "Ready to pay all kinds of attention," he offered.

"Dean, is there something brown on your nose?" asked Rory. "Why are you sucking up to her?"

Dean laughed under his breath and ignored her. "Just being nice."

"Well stop it. I mean, stop being nice the way you are."

Dr. Brown watched quietly, amused. This was one of the younger couples she'd ever done an ultrasound with. A bit of agitation in the ranks was to be expected. As soon as she had Rory's attention again, she began by squirting some gel onto Rory's exposed stomach that still remained flat. One look at that stomach, and no one would know she was pregnant. One look at her face, and no one would know that she'd ever been through anything to taint her innocence. With wide blue eyes, she looked at the doctor's face, awaiting any instruction.

"The gel is a bit cold, I should have warned you," said Dr. Brown, picking up an instrument from the crate. It looked like a long handle of some sort. She touched it to Rory's stomach, beginning to spread the gel around. She reached over and turned the machine atop the crate on, and immediately the whirring sound of Rory's body began buzzing around the room. Dean inched closer to his love, fascinated, his eyes never leaving the screen. Onto it popped an image of many lines without much color, the picture of Rory's insides.

Rory gasped as much from amazement as from the cold. Her sight followed Dean's, and they stared together at the screen.

"Now, it's too early to determine much of anything," Dr. Brown explained, "including the sex. Right now, your baby isn't much more than a bundle of nerves inside your body. But if you look closely, you can see it."

Both teenagers strained their eyes, but neither could pick out a single shape from among the masses. Everything looked the same. Wherever their baby was, it was lost in a tunnel of pure sound. Dr. Brown continued to move the device around and around over a small area on Rory's stomach. Sensing the confusion of her companions, she reached forward and pointed at a particular area on the screen. "See that small object there?"

"No," said Rory and Dean together.

Dr. Brown laughed. "Right there," she said, motioning again to the screen without touching it, which would cause it to short circuit for a moment, and would ruin the picture. "That small bundle there? That tiny shape?..." She looked pointedly at Rory. "That's your baby."

Dean reached out and squeezed Rory's hand. "Wow..." he muttered. He looked at her, and smiled. He loved her so.

Finally, she smiled as well. She appeared to relax, dropping her shoulders, allowing her muscles to fall from their invisible restraints. "Wow," she echoed. "There it is. We created that." She said it as if she were telling the story.

Dean nodded blankly. "We did."

Rory found it to be the most defining moment of her life. Seeing this being, one that she had created by being irresponsible and rash, was almost more than she could comprehend. Oh, what would Lindsay think if she were looking upon this image, this little peanut inside her rival? Rory sighed. Lindsay was no longer in the picture anymore. It was now all about Rory for Dean. She and this baby... they were his everything.

--

When they drove home from Hartford, Rory let Dean have charge of the wheel. She simply sat back in her seat, with tears in her eyes. "I love you," she said, thinking of her baby, the baby they had created, together. This baby that was a part of both of them, this baby that would be a part of the rest of their lives, fusing them together for eternity. It suddenly wasn't just about them anymore. It was now about this tiny, innocent being that they must raise to be a good person. Rory wondered, was she a good person? Would she be a good model for her baby? Certainly the baby's conception wasn't something to be talked about. But was she a bad person? Could she teach someone else to grow?

Dean smiled faintly, and glanced at his true love. "You know I love you, too."

--

Lorelai's car was absent from the Gilmore home. She was working at the Inn, her brand new Inn that was doing well. Rory had been trying to sum up the courage to ask her mother about the picture of the kiss she had found in the town's new tabloid. She kept a copy of the detested magazine in her room, hidden under her bed. Occasionally, she took it out, when she was alone, and just stared at the picture of she and Dean, being broken together in the middle of a grocery store.

It was good that Lorelai was gone, for what Rory had in mind shouldn't bear witnesses. Dean stopped the car engine after parking, and took the keys out of the ignition. "Get out. Hurry," said Rory, jumping out of her seat and slamming the car door behind her. She grabbed Dean's hand and ushered him into the house. She was giddy, knowing that her destiny was now marked, and that her baby was okay. She was giddy, because maybe her life would be okay, as long as Dean was with her, to support her when she could no longer support herself.

"What are you doing?" Dean asked, confused, as he was pulled along by his shirt sleeve.

Safe inside of the house, Rory threw the door to the latch, and raced to her bedroom, Dean following behind her, tripping here and there from the force of Rory's insistence. When they got into her room, she closed that door, as well.

"The scene of the crime..." said Rory, looking around without releasing her grip on Dean's sleeve. "Dean..." She looked at him, right into his crystal clear eyes. "I need to feel something good. Something other than this death and doom that has been surrounding me for weeks now. I... need to feel _you_."

Dean stepped closer, gently running a stray finger along the side of Rory's face, caressing her cheek with such care. "I'm always here," he said, his voice husky. He tilted his head, the expression in his eyes turning playful. "You wanna wrestle?"

Rory giggled as she was swung up into Dean's arms. He spun around, taking her with him in a circle. Dizzy, he stumbled as he finished, and nearly dropped the package in his arms to the floor. "Oops," he said in a giddy sort of way. He and Rory laughed, bending their heads until they touched together.

Carefully, Rory navigated herself away from Dean's arms, until she was standing on her own two feet again. She wasn't sure how to say what she needed to; all she was sure of was that she needed to say it. "I... I love you, Dean. And I'm sorry for the pain that I've caused you, the finality I have now given your life." Dean cocked his head to the side, listening intently. He would always listen, any time she wanted to speak. It was his greatest asset, his loyalty. He had been loyal from the very first time he laid eyes on her, in the dimly lit halls of Stars Hollow High where he fell in love with this girl on first sight.

"Dean, I..." Rory touched her lips together, smacked them, and pulled them apart. "I need to feel something good, something carefree again, before I die of cold and loneliness." Before Dean could interpret and nod, understanding her world because it was his as well, she crushed her lips to his, with stunning brutality, with fevered ambition. She worked his lips apart with her tongue, stabbing him affectionately on his teeth and later on into his mouth.

Dean didn't argue, merely stumbled back a step from the force of Rory's collision with his head. Lost in her, lost in everything Rory, in the idea of being without pain, he forged ahead into the kiss, meeting her tongue with his own, thrust for thrust. Their mouths never came apart, even for an instant, as they battled one another to feel the highest high, to lift out of the pain of their minds and just be bodies, crushed together, in motion.

Dean's hands were brought up, and he cupped the back of Rory's head with them, then went on to trace the length of her shortened hair. Silky soft, the strands moved through his fingers with ease, falling through the separations like curtains being pulled, shutting the two of them off from the rest of the world. They were in their own world now, together; a world of their desired making. Everything else paled in comparison to losing one another in each other, feeling something other than bad, something _good_, something real. Something they could only create together.

Rory finally broke apart from the kiss, breathing hard. "Dean, I love you, you're..." She broke down from the ferocity of her emotions, tears spilling from her eyes. "You're my everything. I feel that you're all I have left now..." Her voice cracked.

With speed and intent, Dean swooped in once again to capture her lips, tasting the salt of her tears, bringing his hands up to wipe them off her cheeks as they slid in trails down her face. From the warmth of the fire in Rory's closed eyes, the tears cooled as they zigzagged down the length of her skin, finally being wiped away with Dean's caring hands. He wished them gone, wanted them blown out of this universe. There was no room for tears in this lust that he felt, this need to have his hands on Rory, with everything in him, giving himself up to the power of her heart.

He thought of the baby, the tiny peanut within Rory's stomach that he had created with his seed. He kissed her lips, again and again with his own, creating fire with fire, igniting her flame from within his own body. Their lips fused together, separated, and then crushed together again, countless numbers of times. He pulled gently on her lower lip, biting it between his teeth with a softness that betrayed his love for her. He wanted to rile her up, but he could never hurt her. Rory's lip tasted good in his mouth, and he was hesitant to release it in order to grab the rest of her mouth for another searing kiss.

Mind controlled by the fire burning in her loins, Rory broke away from Dean with hesitation, and began unbuttoning his long-sleeved shirt, with speed, intent on getting to the soft, tanned skin underneath. Tossing the garment away, she pulled her own t-shirt up and over her head, discarding it in some far away pile, paying no attention to where it landed, or if it landed at all.

She felt that she was flying as Dean bent to rain kisses on her shoulders, her collarbone, and the tops of her breasts. With skill that she appreciated, he managed to unhook the back of her bra, and slid the straps down her shoulders and away from her arms completely. He loved her breasts. They were small without being too small, firm yet moldable. His hands moved of their own volition, attacking her skin with love, caressing her nerve endings to make her come undone, just as the bra hook had displayed.

Trying to catch her breath, now standing a couple of inches away from Dean, Rory's breasts heaved up and down slightly as she looked upon Dean's face with a softness reserved for him alone. Her first love, who had always been so kind and gentle with her, wanting to hold on even when she was ready to let go. No longer would she ever let go. She wanted to be bound to him forever and, lucky for her, she now was.

Looking meaningfully into Dean's eyes, Rory trailed her fingers lightly over his exposed skin, on his shoulders, and down his chest, to the revealing line of downy hair that trailed down from his belly button, pointing to his groin, concealed beneath his jeans. He giggled girlishly because her touch tickled, and she laughed right along with him as she continued her exploration. He was perfect, he was hers, all of this skin, and what was underneath. Bound to her, as she was bound to him. The proof lie in her flat stomach that concealed the fruit of their joined passions. It had been so long since they had felt passion together. After the initial night and the shock of what was to come, she hadn't felt in a particularly warm mood. She had left him alone, simply laying beside him last night as she watched him breathe, and knew that she loved him, she did, she did. With all the passion in her, she would love him until clichés were killed, love him until the day the "first love" idea died. They would last far beyond their combined years, in their child that would be born in less than nine months.

She loved exploring his body in this way, getting to feast her eyes and her hands, her careful fingers, along the skin that patched up Dean's insides, holding him together. She couldn't take it any longer. She stopped the exploration of her fingers, and reached for the fly of his jeans, unbuttoning it until it reached the bottom, then tearing them down his legs, taking his boxers with her hands that were so quick to undress him, as she had been doing with her eyes for the entire ride home. He hadn't known it, but she had stared, lost in him, loving him, as he paid attention to the road. Her mind dilly-dallying from what was stark and plain and painful, she had begun to feel the fire spread through her limbs, the telling fire that made her sense that she needed to see the very deepest part of her lover again, before she died of the aching loneliness that surrounded her, ever since that night when her own mother called her "the other woman", tastelessly stealing from her any of the happiness she and Dean had created together.

Today, it was time to find that happiness again. Dean stood before her, naked, and stepped out of his pants, flinging them aside with an ankle. "Your turn?" he offered, hooking his fingers on the inside of her pants.

"Yes, please," she chirped cheerfully, helping him to undo her buttons and slide down the cloth that covered her bottom half. Tossing her clothes aside as he had done, she looked into his eyes, his eyes that looked only at her, at the damp curls between her thighs that called to him with a deafening roar that threatened to undo them both if they didn't take each other, right here, right now.

"I..." began Dean, reaching between her legs to finger her folds. Rory moaned, throwing her head back, fighting to maintain her balance. "Love..." He could feel her slick wetness, just waiting for him. Perhaps she had been waiting without realizing it since the very last time he touched her there. "Y -- "

He couldn't even finish, as Rory hungrily grabbed his hand and shoved one of his fingers up inside of her. "Ohhh," she breathed, gasping upon his hand as she leaked juices onto his palm. Breathing hard, she struggled to find her voice again. "I know you do," she acknowledged, understanding what he had been trying to say.

Working his finger slowly in and out of her, Dean's lips curved into a smile, a cocky one at that, as he knew that he was now in charge. He had her, quite literally, in the palm of his hand. Rory didn't smile back, barely saw him, in fact, as she threw her head back and her eyelids fluttered open and closed repeatedly. She didn't know what to do as she finally, after so long, simply _felt_, without consequence. There was nothing to lose now. Nobody could take this moment away from her. It was hers; she had earned it. She would remember it.

Her wetness made his mouth water as he longed to taste more of her. She stumbled, unable to keep herself on her feet, and regretfully, Dean withdrew his finger from her intense heat, and grabbed her body, tossing her onto the bed. Falling onto a feather-soft mattress, Rory licked her lips. "Mmm... I hope you're not finished."

Dean's eyes sparkled, as he was anything but. Climbing atop her, his cock brushed her curls, leaking at the head, ready to plunge inside of her. He held back, grabbing his instrument and playing it by squeezing and pumping his hand. He was hard, but he could grow harder. He could be more ready for her. As Rory lay back, panting from the effort of having to stand that whole while, Dean grunted in pleasure as his hand moved up and down his shaft, milking his body for all it was worth. He wanted to be hard as a rock for his girl, for the first time that he would be inside of her, with no barriers, no condom to fail to save them both. Now, he could spill his seed inside of her body, and truly claim her, as she was begging to be claimed.

Finally catching her breath, Rory glanced up to see her boyfriend on his knees, coaxing himself into a frenzy. She followed his lead, sliding a manicured nail into her wet core, burying her finger until she reached its end, then pulling out and pushing deeper still yet again. She combined her moans with Dean's thrusts into his own hand, as she thrust her finger, inserting another one to make her shudder. It wasn't the same as having his touch inside her, but still, it wasn't bad.

Dean had at some point closed his eyes, losing himself in the feel of his masturbation. But now, as his hardness grew, his ears began working again, and he heard one of Rory's moans, that made his heart thud quicker still. His eyes popped open, and he let go of his penis, taking Rory's hand out of her body. She looked up at him, trying to smile, for she did love him so much, to a suffocating degree. She wanted to be suffocated by his cock, to be ridden like a pony, to finally step off the edge of the cliff. She waited for his decision, putting her fate in his hands.

Bringing her two wet fingers up to his mouth, Dean sucked them in past his lips, tasting her, _tasting her_... She was salty and slick on his tongue, delicious as homemade chocolate pie. He wanted to share this experience with her, but was too selfish to let go of her fingers, sucking them dry with his tongue that had so recently been a resident of her mouth. His aching flesh begged for release, his cock snapping to attention as finally he let her fingers slide from his mouth, and he prepared to bear down on her, to give her the ride of her life. She deserved it, after all. _She deserved everything..._

"I'm going inside you now, Ror," he informed her, unable to wait any longer. If he wasn't buried within her between this minute and the next, he would explode cum all over her body. He needed to release inside of her, caught within her tightness, bathed in her heat. He positioned himself at her entrance, and then bore down, sliding into her wetness like a swimmer into water, just as confident, just as secure as an Olympian taking the first dive of their race. Her muscles instantly contracted around him, squeezing him tight as he entered her further still, burying himself within an inch of life, settling there, basking in the glow of feeling himself within her, inside of her core. Their cores pressed together, he enjoyed the moment, looking into her eyes to make sure she was enjoying it, too.

Rory's eyelids stopped fluttering, and she began to stare at her boyfriend, penetrating his head with a gaze, looking past his flesh, into his brain, seeing herself tattooed there, permanent, and beloved. Purposefully, she squeezed her inner muscles tighter around him, loving his lustful groan. She smiled. Now she had the power.

It seemed as though Dean didn't want to move. He was so ecstatic with his current condition, it didn't seem to enter his mind. Rory took it into her hands, beginning to ride his cock slowly, sliding him out just barely, and then plunging him inside of her once again. Pushing her body up with her hands at her sides, his cock slipped from her core out to the unforgiving air, that was so cold, compared to the inside of Rory's body. She began pushing him further out of her, and therefore pulling him in deeper with every backwards thrust. Sheathed within her, he was ready to explode.

"Gahhh!" Dean yelled out. Breathing hard, he began to take over Rory's job, pulling himself in and out of her. His thrusts began to take violent power, but neither of them minded the banging of their genitals into one another. Using his arms that suddenly felt so weak, he rode his love, in and out, in and out. She shuddered and moaned loudly into his ear. He lowered his body down onto hers, skin meeting sweat-slicked skin. With one final thrust, she came, and upon feeling her release, he came as well, within her.

Moaning her lover's name, Rory shook and shivered from the course of their lovemaking as she felt Dean's hot seed filling her body, making its trip to her baby on the inside. Quivering from the power of coming together with him, finally, again, she reached for him, pulling his body flush with hers, kissing him feverishly, shaking, _shaking_... They shook together, breathing hard, kissing one another in a sloppy way on the lips, on the forehead, at the hair line, on closed eyelids. Crashing, smashing together in the heat of their love, they fell to stillness together, Dean on top of her body, holding her tight to him.

It felt good, his weight upon hers, forcing every bone in her body to dig comfortably into the mattress below her shoulder blades and her buttocks. They breathed in unison, chugging oxygen into their starved lungs, and releasing carbon dioxide with every rise and fall of their shoulders.

Dean was so sweaty. It felt good, the end of a great workout. They had certainly burned off the calories of breakfast, and would soon be starving for lunch. All he knew was, he sure as hell wasn't fixing it. His sweat combined with hers, creating a river between them. He brushed her hair so tenderly from her face, tucking it behind her ears, staring at her as if for the first and last time, ever grateful that he would look upon that face, in all likelihood, for the rest of his life. Surely, no one else had ever known such passion as this. For if they had, how could they ever separate? How could they ever let go, knowing the feeling of being fused together in such a way? Why would they want it to end?

Kissing Rory on the forehead three, four, five times, Dean rested his own forehead against hers. Their breathing slowed to a normal pace, their chests ceased heaving, and it was just him, on top of her, after the dance of all mortals. It was just them, together. Finally. Again.

"Dean?" said Rory, her voice so strained it was close to a whisper. He pushed his upper body upwards with his strong biceps, and stared down at her, awaiting what she had to say. Rory smiled, and caressed his face, as he had done hers. And then, in answer to his earlier sentence, she said, "You know I love you, too."

- -  
to be continued...


	9. I Love You, Don't Touch Me

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Oh, please! I need it like the Gilmores need coffee! This is my first multiple chapter story, so anything you have to say would be much appreciated.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Beta: Thank you, Elyssa! You're awesome.  
Author's Note: I would give excuses for taking so long, but that would be boring. Thank you so, so much to all of the supporters of this story. Know that it will be finished. I will not give up on this story as long as you do not give up on it. Thank you for being a part of this journey.  
Another Note: Song lyrics used in this chapter are from 'I'll Be' by Edwin McCain.

**Chapter Eight: I Love You, Don't Touch Me**

- -  
_She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue._

Blue, like the colors reflected from the sun catcher. A blue and purple butterfly hung in the air on the inside of Rory's bedroom window, swaying in the slight wind, exposed to the air through the opened glass. Sighing with satisfaction, Dean stepped back from hanging the butterfly himself, making his way back to Rory's bed to sit beside her.

"A butterfly, for our baby," he said.

Rory clasped her hand in his, looking at the blue reflection on the walls and the ceiling around them. The sun splintered the light into all kinds of directions, and the wind kept them moving and swaying, constantly. "For our baby," she agreed.

Rory was in one of her better moods, Dean was happy to detect. Earlier that day, it all hadn't seemed so simple. He sat back, holding Rory to his chest as he slouched against the pillows and the headboard, remembering.

--

"We are not naming our baby Priscilla!" raged Rory, tearing her way out of the kitchen and making a beeline for the couch. She began gathering up the sheets that Dean had slept in, burrowing them into a ball.

"Why not?" Dean followed her into what was his current bedroom.

"It's prissy! She'll be teased. They'll say she thinks she's a princess."

"Because of her name?"

"Yes, because of her name. Names are everything, Dean. They define you. They become your permanent adjective. Anything you're associated with will be because of your name."

Dean's shoulders slumped. He had no idea why she was suddenly so upset. "But... she _will _be a princess. She'll be my little princess."

Rory dropped the bundle of sheets suddenly, and broke into a grin. "Aww, that's so sweet." She thought about it. "But no."

"Why not?"

"Dean, do I have to explain this again? I just told you!" Oh, she was mad again.

"Fine, what about Dean Jr.?"

"Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! No! Dean. No!"

"Why? Your mom named you after her, didn't she?"

"My mom was drugged, okay? She was high on Demerol. Her greatest fantasy consisted of a bath with a Greek slave to feed her ice chips. Her wardrobe consisted of the thin, scratchy hospital garment that would barely fit her bloated form! She was not thinking clearly, and neither are you."

"Fine." Dean put his hands up to his chest, backing away slightly. "Fine, I give. What do you think we should name our baby?"

Well, Rory hadn't thought of that. She suddenly found herself unprepared, and she hated to be unprepared. She gathered up the bundle of sheets and began walking with them to the laundry room. Dean followed her, relentless, wanting to solve this problem in one day. As if it could be solved that quickly. What could be solved in a day? Multiplication tables, maybe. Great, so he was thinking this would be as simple as third grade math! What had gotten into him?

"Uh... Rory?" Dean prodded, folding his arms over his chest and leaning on the edge of the open doorway.

"I don't... I don't know," Rory finally admitted, shoving the sheets into the washer and measuring out the soap. She'd been doing laundry since she was ten. Mom used to give her coffee only if she did chores that Lorelai didn't feel like doing. She was so rude, hoarding it that way. What was so wrong with a ten year-old drinking heated caffeine?

Oh, God. Rory had to sit down. What was the matter with her? Why was she so worked up over nothing? Rory Gilmore was an even tempered person. She avoided confrontations with almost everyone. She made her way back to the living room and sat down on the couch.

"Dean, what is wrong with me?" she asked, placing her head in her hands. "One minute I want to kiss you, the next I want to repel you with super-human powers."

"Hormones," Lorelai happily chirped on her way down the stairs. "Hormones, children. It's like menopause, with weight gain and plenty of Demerol promised in the future."

"Wait, wait." Dean was trying to get a handle on things. "Is she going to be this way -- hot, cold, hot, cold -- throughout the entire pregnancy?"

"Welcome to my world, Mommy and Daddy," Lorelai said so cheerfully that Rory wanted to tackle her and pull out five -- no, six! -- strands of her hair.

"Mom, you are so happy and calm about this, I could _strangle_ you!"

"Oh yeah?" Lorelai swears she had a whole response ready, but just then, the phone rang. "Well. I'll kick your ass another time, Gilmore. Your ass is grass."

Rory rolled her eyes and crossed one leg over the other, sulking in her seat, falling into the softness of the cushions that, as it turned out, weren't so soft.

Lorelai hit a button on the cordless phone and answered, "Hello?" Instantly she rolled her eyes in an exact imitation of Rory. She brought a hand to her forehead and seemed like she wanted to slam said head into the wall. "Uh huh... Yeah... I don't know... No... Um... Well... Just -- "

"Who is it?" Rory asked curiously, unfolding her arms and sitting forward.

Lorelai rolled her eyes again and put the conversation on speakerphone.

"...and who knows where he could be by now. He could have traveled miles and miles -- he could be in another country!" Emily Gilmore's voice, brash and impatient, was in their faces.

"Mom, he's not in another country," Lorelai assured her.

"Hi, Grandma!" said Rory.

"Rory. Hello. How is it you're both talking to me? Where is your mother?"

"I'm here, Mom. It's called speakerphone."

"Oh. Yes, of course. We had that installed a few years back, but hardly ever use it."

"Who's in another country?" asked Rory, wanting to be interested in something other than her thoughts of how she would fail as a mother.

"Your grandfather. He's taken off! He's no longer in the pool house, he's not answering his phone, and I don't know what to do!"

"Steal his underwear," Lorelai suggested.

Emily sighed. "Could you just once take something seriously? _I need to know where he is!_"

"Why, Grandma?" Rory asked. "He could just be away on business."

"But he always tells me when he's going away on business."

Dean stood in the corner, listening without being a part of this, feeling lost in the world of all these Gilmore girls.

"But you're not together anymore, are you, Mom?" asked Lorelai. "He could have flown to a different state to get away."

"I just figured he'd gone somewhere that has no phone access. Someplace nobody goes, like Ohio."

"Which is a state," Lorelai put in.

"Oh, dear." You could actually hear Emily bringing a hand to her face, stricken. "What if he never comes back?"

"He'll come back, Grandma. Or we'll all be worried," assured Rory. "Be strong!"

"Let's all thank The Rock for that advice," said Lorelai.

"But I..." Emily sighed, so sadly, and Dean felt sorry for her in that moment. "I've never been alone... this long..."

Emily's defeated and almost frightened tone of voice was lost on loopy Lorelai. "Think of it as a vacation," she suggested. "You two obviously could use some time apart."

"Yes... Yes, that's true. Perhaps you're right."

"Of course I'm right. I am always right. If you believe you're right, then you must be wrong, for I am right, and therefore you cannot be. For I -- "

"We'll call again soon, Grandma," Rory cut in, standing up to be nearer to the phone. "We'll call later tonight, to see how you're coping. And we'll be there for dinner again tomorrow night to keep you company."

"And to keep the booze company," Lorelai put in.

"Yes," said Emily, sounding somewhat more assured. "Yes, of course. I'll talk to you then."

"Take care of the booze!" Lorelai shouted, just as Rory cut off the call.

There was so much silence while Rory thought of her poor grandmother, all alone in a house so big; while Lorelai thought of the booze without company. Dean's tongue worked all along his teeth, counting them, reveling in their cleanliness. His mind was a jumble of thoughts, none of which seemed appropriate after such a phone call.

But, finally, Dean spoke up, when it seemed that the silence would eat away at their brains. "What about Duchess?"

Lorelai sighed and let the booze dreams go. "Duchess? What?"

"For our baby," Dean clarified.

Rory, no longer grief stricken for her family, now switched back into outraged mode. "I'm sorry, when did our baby become a purebred cocker spaniel?"

"Come on, Rory!" Dean called, turning to follow Rory, who had disappeared into the kitchen. His voice echoed through the small hallways and welcoming foyer. "If she's going to be a princess, she might as well be the right breed!"

"I am not laughing," Rory informed him, her voice deadly, her tongue ready to lash. She then set to work in her task: finding something to eat. Lo and behold, but the numerous countertops had been wiped clean some Thursday ago, and the cabinet doors, so easily unhinged, held back nothing but dishes they never used.

"Mom!" Rory sang out, interrupting something Dean was trying to squeak out.

"Baby?" Lorelai sang back, following the holler into their seldom used kitchen.

"I'm hungry," said Rory. "We have no food."

"Well that's because we keep it at Luke's, dear girl. Did you throw up your brain last night?"

"She threw up everything else," Dean muttered from behind his hand. He had to give himself something. This whole not fighting back thing was indeed his forte, but it was getting old.

Rory narrowed her eyes, turning her attention to her lover, the one whom she loved, the one who would love her for the next eight tragic months of pregnancy. If he was lucky enough to survive that long. "Mom," she said, instead of something to poor Dean. For some reason, Lorelai didn't seem to annoy her the way he did with every. little. thing. he said. "Let's go to Luke's!"

"Can I come?" Dean asked politely. He was hungry, too. All of this arguing made a throat go dry and empty of all residue.

"Of course, darling dear," said Lorelai, who was so happy when food was a-comin'. "You're paying."

"With what?" Dean asked as he followed his two girls out the front door into the hot June sun.

"Oh, God, Dean, it's just a saying." Rory folded her arms underneath her breasts and huffed. Why did he not get any of their jokes? Why did he only laugh at inappropriate times? Why did he want a cocker spaniel for a daughter?

Dean frowned and then got an idea. In the instance where he might have slugged a guy for getting on his nerves, he tackled Rory gently to the grass. When she screamed like being hit by cold water, he laughed and helped cushion her fall against the grass. While she struggled against him, fighting him off like a wildcat, he pinned her arms over her head and leaned forward to place a pouty kiss on her closed lips with a loud, resounding smack, and a big fat, "Mmmwah! -- I love you."

Lorelai laughed politely behind her hand, loving these kids more every moment, warming up to Dean again, as she always tended to do. She watched as Dean tickled under Rory's arms, where laughter needed to be freed, and she heard the giggles from her daughter who had given up on stalking Dean to his death for the moment. Mood swing over, Angel Rory back in business. Check.

"I... AHH!" Rory was laughing so hard, her stomach ached. The ache was dull and became duller as Dean's fingers magically found the place just below her belly to caress in that horribly ticklish way. "AHH! I love -- stop it, you butthead! I... I love you, too."

Dean laughed along with her and finally stopped tickling to pull her upper body close to his, freeing her from the grass that stuck in her silky hair. He hugged her to him, tightly, but not too tightly, for she was fragile these days. He just wanted her to know that his words were true. And perhaps he wanted to make sure she meant hers, too.

It was a sweet moment, one where the two children should have been left alone. But Lorelai would have none of it. "All right, dog pile!" she yelled in warning before jumping onto the both of them so they could all three roll around on the grass and get it in _everyone's_ hair.

"There's something so wrong about, ahh!" Dean stopped to laugh and shove a hand away from his chest. "Something so wrong about wrestling with two women, one of whom could be your future mother-in-law."

Rory stopped tickling her mother, stopped before she could move upwards to frizz Lorelai's hair. Mother-in-law? Oh, God. Did that mean that Dean had thought about... Was it just because... Did he mean it when...

"Get used to it," came from Lorelai as she disentangled herself gleefully. "You're living with the Gilmores now. None of us act our age or social standing."

Rory was frowning again. She bopped Dean cruelly on the head. "Don't shock me with things like that ever again!"

"Owe! What?"

She wasn't done bopping. "You can't just say things like that, right out of the blue! She's not your mother, she's mine, now just leave it!"

Dean was back to laughter within seconds, both from the confusion and the eventual grasp of Rory's anger. It was going to be a long final eight months... but he was going to enjoy it. The longest journeys always had the best rewards... and the most vivid memories.

"Dean!" Rory fired. She looked to Lorelai for help. "He's laughing at me!"

"Oh, stop accusing him of everything, and let's go eat already!" Lorelai stood up and brushed off her jeans, then reached down offering a hand to each of her two teenagers. Really, she considered them both hers now, what with creating her grandchild and all. Dean, that poor kid on a sucker stick. He was a hyphenated-Gilmore now, man or not. They would stick with him and forever follow him home, which was just fine considering they all shared a home.

The rest of the way to Luke's, Dean and Rory listened contentedly to Lorelai rambling about how she couldn't wait to be crowned World's Youngest Grandmother, to have a tiara put upon her hair ("I could be one of those Nice 'n Easy girls, you know? 'Always covers grey... not that I have any.' Wink."), silver and shining even despite the passifiers glued on. She wondered aloud on what her thank you speech would be about, other than those unforgettable drunken nights, or perhaps they were stoned nights, when Rory may have been conceived, therefore tunneling the way toward the grandchild. Rory listened intently, her mood seeming to simmer so much that midway to the diner, she even let Dean slip his hand into hers and threaded her fingers through his affectionately.

"Will you be there to support me in distasteful drag, Dean?" Lorelai was saying, still speaking of the banquet on her night-of-nights as, yes, we've all heard by now, World's Youngest Grandmother.

"Depends on the dress," Dean put in, pulling Rory in through the doorway with one arm as the other held the diner door open. The jingling of the bell signaled their entrance and brought Luke running quickly enough.

"Oh mah," Lorelai drawled, "there don't seem to be any tables here, mista." Luke rolled his eyes and set about wiping off a nearby recently used table, the only one there were even plates on, for the rest of the place was empty. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, a dead time for a diner -- halfway between dinner and lunch, and no one came for lunner anymore unless Kirk had a day off from his "jobs". Truthfully, Luke enjoyed the peace and quiet, though he would trade it for Lorelai's face looking into his just so, annoying hick accent or not. She grinned at him, showing all of her teeth, bobbing her head slightly from side to side in a "nah-nah-nah" sort of way before placing her butt in a chair right near the door.

"Sit down, children, and child-to-be," Lorelai ordered her two young ones.

Luke looked startled. He stopped rubbing the wet dishcloth along the table before him and looked piercingly at Lorelai's eyes, before his own traveled to Rory's sparkling blues. "Child-to-be?"

Lorelai nodded with ease. "I believe that's what I said. I told you about it. Don't act so surprised, mista."

Luke sighed, resigned. So now Rory knew that he knew. "You remember that, do you?" He tried to ignore the way Rory's eyes fled from his as much as his did from her.

"Of course I remember telling you about Rory's pregnancy. You turned **so** red."

Luke was now the one to nod. "Then you called me Elmo."

"Right, that was fun. Hey, should I have called you Mario instead?"

"I always preferred Luigi." Luke regretted the quip as soon as it had left his mouth, for he knew something irritating was coming.

"You played Nintendo?" Lorelai asked, bluntly surprised.

"Once," Luke allowed.

"You were a 20-something Nintendo geek, weren't you?"

"I played it once," Luke maintained.

"Why ever would you stop?" Lorelai was interested. There was no stopping her now.

"I didn't like the whole idea of controlling some creature through a handheld remote. It was like, 'Hey, I'm pushing your buttons.'"

Lorelai was ready for fire, and quite convinced already: "You sucked at it, didn't you? Luigi died, didn't he?" She gasped. "You were a video game loser."

Luke paused for a sickening death glare. "Whatever you say."

"It's **always** whatever I say."

"Or whatever I don't say."

"In those rare moments when I stop talking." Yes, even Lorelai was aware of her conversation skills.

"Your words are missed," said Luke. Though his sarcasm was not missed.

Lorelai cocked her head to the side, grinning. "I love how genuine you insist on being at all times."

Luke grunted. "Me too." He dared another look Rory's way. She gave him a small smile. "So, what'll you have?" he asked of them all, though his words seemed directed at her. It was his way of asking what, of anything in the world, he could do for her in this time of need and floundering.

"I'm okay, Luke," Rory said, wanting to define the closeness the two were sharing by bringing their stares out into words. "And I'll have the tuna melt." She smiled at him, and her smile was returned.

"Me, too," said Dean, thinking that easiest for everyone.

Rory turned to him, disgusted. "You're just getting the same thing I am so you can gloat tomorrow morning when your lunch doesn't come back up again!" She was so annoyed that she barely noticed the way Lorelai and Luke's fingers ghosted along one another as Luke put his order pad in his back pocket and headed toward Caesar in the back.

--

The blue of the swaying butterfly swirled its color all over Rory's bedroom wall. Her hand, laced in Dean's, gripped his tightly as she, too, thought back on the day of many fights that was merely a preview of what was to come. She hated hormones. She closed her eyes and sat back against Dean, who was slouched against the headboard of her bed.

"Are you tense?" asked Dean, concerned. "You feel tense."

"I guess." Rory was tired. Dean sat in silence, wanting to do something for her, for their baby. Something to calm everyone down. Before he could carry out his plan, Rory's breathing seemed labored, and she appeared to have fallen asleep.

No matter. It would be easier to do this without an audience, anyway. Dean placed a tentative hand over Rory's flat belly, rolling up her tanktop slightly in order to feel skin-to-skin, to get as close to the fetus as possible. And then he began to sing.

_"The strands in your eyes that color them wonderful,_

_Stop me and steal my breath,_

_Emeralds from mountains thrust towards the sky,_

_Never revealing their depth..."_

Rory snuggled close in her sleep, and he inhaled the soft scent of her breath. He closed his eyes and prepared to drift off to sleep as well, to follow her into the land of dreams. And while he was drifting, he sang some last words...

_"I'll be your crying shoulder,_

_I'll be love suicide,_

_I'll be better when I'm older,_

_I'll be the greatest fan of your life..."_

Before long, both teenagers were asleep on the bed, with the prism of blue shining directly in their closed eyes, pulling them to dreams of blue skies, pink babies, and everything in the world making it worth it to be a fan.

- -  
to be continued...


	10. Tricky Things

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Oh, please! I need it like the Gilmores need coffee! This is my first multiple chapter story, so anything you have to say would be much appreciated.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Beta: Elyssa the brave.  
Author's Note: Due to some true life crises, my muse has scampered in the past months. Please forgive me, those of you still interested in this story. I can see you through my magnifying glass... I'm hoping things are settled now, and I can bring you the story to its end.

**Chapter Nine: Tricky Things**

- -  
_She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue._

Blue as the dental floss wedged between Rory's two front teeth as Lorelai handed her the phone. "Tell them I'll call them back," she mumbled, fidgeting with the minty string.

Lorelai exhaled slowly as she closed her eyes for effect. "It's your dad."

Rory set the silly piece of string down. She took the phone and covered the mouthpiece with her hand. "Did you tell him?" she whispered, her voice wavering.

Lorelai shook her head.

Rory offered her the phone back. "Do it?"

Lorelai shook her head.

"Mommy?..." Rory pleaded, suddenly reduced to a four year-old child.

"I had to tell my father, baby," Lorelai reminded her daughter, creating a soothing caress along the back of her neck. "If I can tell Richard and Emily Gilmore that I have just ruined their social status for life, I think you can tell your dad about an accident. He'll deal, just like we'll deal."

Rory's eyes had never been wider as she accepted the phone and brought it up to the side of her face, her motions mechanical, practiced over years of answering and replying to questions that meant nothing in the scheme of things. What she was about to say would mean everything. It already did, without even being said. Her chin wobbled, and she cleared her throat.

"Dad?"

"Hey, kiddo," said Christopher, somewhere on the other end. "Your mom isn't very talkative today. But she said you had something to tell me? Something good, I hope," he kidded. Of course, he had to kid right now. And of course, she could tell by his tone, that he had absolutely no idea.

"Um..." Rory had always detested the use of the spoken pause, the dead space of it with noise, the way it polluted the ear. But here she was, her pause making noise when her words could not. "See, here's the thing..."

Christopher waited patiently on the line.

"You know Dean? That... boy? Dean?"

"He plays baseball," Christopher guessed, thinking of a past day spent in Stars Hollow.

"Yeah... Yeah. That's him."

"Mmhmm."

"He's... living with us." Rory blanched, wanting to smack herself in the forehead for stalling and, in the process, giving out details that _were not helpful_.

Christopher's voice took on an edge. "You have a boy... friend living with you? And your mom?"

Rory looked around for help. Her mother had left to give her conversation some privacy. "Mom!" she hollered, rushing out of the bathroom. She handed Lorelai the phone. "Help me? I know I hate admitting defeat, but I am terrible at this. I can't, I can't do it."

Lorelai's eyes were soft as she took the phone from Rory and stood up from her place at the kitchen table. "Chris?" she spoke into it calmly. She listened, no doubt to some protective ranting. But her calmness remained. "Yes, Dean is living with us. But you actually didn't get the whole story."

This time, when she paused, she looked at Rory, looked deep into her daughter's eyes. Together they wished for a world other than this. "Chris, she's pregnant. Rory is pregnant."

That was when Rory walked away.

--

Long, long minutes later, Lorelai snuck in through the doorway of Rory's bedroom, re-closing the door behind her. The shades were drawn, and so day was like night, except in a dream, with fringes of light like reality flitting about. Rory hugged her stuffed rooster to her chest in the darkness she had created for herself, facing away from the door as she lay curled up on her bed. She didn't dare roll over as Lorelai's footsteps crept closer to her.

Lorelai paused, looking down upon Rory, and then placed a gentle kiss on her temple. "Your father says he loves you," she whispered. Then she left Rory to be alone.

Big, fat tears slid down Rory's cheeks to wet the sheets she had just recently slept in. She rarely knew why she cried anymore.

--

The sun sat high in the sky that afternoon when Rory ventured out in search of her beau. She'd scrubbed her face clean of the grimy tears and slapped on enough chapstick to call it lube. After a thin coat of mascara, she was out the door.

Dean was nowhere in town, or if he was, he hid well. He'd left the house that morning without a word, and Rory had missed the soft whisper of his pajama pants as he made his way to her bed to wake her. Something about the intimacy of that gesture gave her a reason to shut off the thoughts in her mind and go to sleep at night, for she had someone to wake up to. But this morning, he was gone. And everywhere she looked, she could tell he hadn't been there.

She began to miss his floppy hair, his rich blue-green eyes, as if she hadn't just seen these things yesterday. Feeling particularly needy, she wanted the feel of his strong arms with their muscle wrapped around her skinny ribcage, sealing her in as a part of him, fusing them together as one.

Sighing with frustration, Rory settled into a spot at the counter at Luke's. "Coffee?" she tried, giving Luke a million watt smile despite her current predicament, simply because she knew what was coming.

Luke's nostrils flared, and that was that. "It's not good for the baby."

"Oh, that's not true. My mom says I loved coffee when I was a baby."

"Your mother's a lunatic."

Rory smiled again, but said nothing to allude to what she knew of this so-called _lunatic_ and the man standing right before her. Why they just wouldn't come out and say something was beyond her, but she would play their game, by their rules, and win in the end when she could finally go, "Ha! I knew it."

"D'you think lunacy is genetic?" Rory asked, unconsciously rubbing small circles over her tummy. "And let's please not use me as an example here," she added as an afterthought.

Luke refilled Kirk's cup a few stools down the counter, and then set the coffee pot down, eyeing Rory with such open honesty, it made her want to squirm. "Rory, I... you know that I..." He looked down. Took his baseball cap off, scratched his hair, and put the cap back on again. "I'm really not good at the sentimental thing..."

She had to save him. "It's okay, Luke. You don't actually need to say it. I know what you mean."

"I'll always be here. Unless a truck runs into me and drags my body several miles down the road. Still... I'll find a way back."

Rory nodded with surprising ease. "Thanks for that image, Luke, and wow, I didn't know you'd go that far for me. I have to say, I'm honored." She did the uncomfortable staring thing back into his eyes for a good ten seconds to let him know that she was as genuine as he meant for his words to be. And to let him know that verbal communication was something they didn't necessarily need between them to understand one another.

"Luke..." Rory began, feeling her way along the counter with her fingertips as she stood and prepared to leave. "This is just a shot in the dark, but, if your life changed dramatically, and then you didn't want to be found, where do you think you would go?"

Luke took one more moment for Rory before having to get back to work. "Probably back to the place where it all went wrong."

--

She found Dean standing across the street from Lindsay's house. His old house. Hands in his pants pockets, staring, dreaming. She choked back a sob and stayed clear of his vision. Realizing it was clever of her to wear her soft-soled sneakers, Rory was able to sneak up to a few feet behind him, without him knowing she was there, and she could see what he saw.

Through one of the front windows of that darling little house, Lindsay sat at the dining room table, perusing some sort of reading material, with no clue about her two new enemies staring straight at her from outside. Rory swallowed a gasp, and what she believed could very well have been her heart coming all the way up into her throat.

Throughout the moments that passed by in which Lindsay moved only to turn a page or two, Rory found herself wallowing in the uncertainty, dying every second Dean looked at Lindsay, waiting to know which one of them he'd choose. Rory hugged herself, wrapping her arms protectively around her tummy that wasn't yet substantial enough. She couldn't feel any movement of the child. She supposed the fetus wouldn't move at all yet. She had to wonder what it would feel like when it kicked -- if it would be like the discomfort of an empty, growling stomach, or something only a mother can experience and describe.

The hormones chose "impatience" out of the grab bag at this time. "Dean," Rory mumbled, not able to meet his eyes when he whipped around to face her.

"What are you doing here...?"

"That was my question. You're going to have to think of a new one." It was then that Rory could look up, with only one wet mascara streak down her face. The intense emotions of this pregnancy were one thing she was certain not a single person would miss.

Dean sighed; ran a hand that trembled through his hair in a way that he'd never done before. Rory thought she must be making him develop new nervous habits, but she wasn't sure how that made her feel. "I just needed to look at her. At my house. I needed to look back on my old life, really look at it, and see it for what it was, before I could move on."

Rory's voice quivered like a plucked string gone soft. "Your old life? You just had to look at it? As if you didn't look at it your entire life for 18 years? And now... what? You're having second thoughts about us, and thinking of going back to her?"

"Rory, it's not like that. I did this for you."

"Oh!" She wiped away the gathering tears. "Why, thank you," she blurted out, the sarcasm dripping like diluted honey. "How about if I go stare at my past for a while for **you**? I'll go call Jess up, compare our relationship to the one I had with him -- make lists, keep score."

"Rory! Stop. I came here to say goodbye to my old life so that I didn't have to wonder about it again."

"D... do you think you'll always wonder if it should have been her instead of me? Because, Dean... I can't live like that."

"Neither can I." Dean stepped up closer to Rory so that his chest touched her chin. "I want you, only you." He encircled his arms around her body and looked deeply into her eyes. "Even when you're bopping me on the head."

"Hey! That was only like once! Okay, like, five tim -- "

She couldn't finish her sentence as Dean swooped in and captured her lips in a kiss that dared to dream of forever, and of a baby, too. Words swam through her head, thoughts and worries imprinted on her brain that she wanted to share and yet sometimes keep to herself. But the words became lost in the feel of Dean's lips that tugged and needed, and in the touch of his fingers wiping the sloppy tear from her face.

Rory's legs, gone weak, began trembling in a way that she couldn't control. She fought to keep herself steady, refusing to tear her lips from Dean's, wanting to stay melted together like those double popsicles Lorelai would never share. As her legs gave in, she fell in to Dean's body, burying her head in his chest as his arms grabbed her just in time.

"Are you okay?" he asked her, and she didn't know.

"Don't leave me. Not today," Rory said plainly, looking up into Dean's eyes as he cradled her now in the strength and security of his arms. She couldn't recall being so needy since the age of five, when she first started school, and had to spend a whole half day without her mother. She could remember the torture of it clearly because she was feeling it now, any time Dean was gone and she needed him, for no reason at all other than she did.

Dean opened his mouth to answer, but at that point the front door of his old house swung open. Rory buried her face in Dean's chest, unable to join in the stare-down that went on between man and wife. Without a word being said, Dean adjusted his grip on the body in his arms, and started carrying her home.

--

"Explain to me why you want to willingly put Dean in front of my Emily Gilmore's scrutiny? On purpose?" Lorelai was stunned at the idea and, in fact, ready to worry for Dean's welfare.

"I don't want to be apart from him," Rory explained.

"Not even for a couple of hours?"

"Not today."

"You'll miss him much more once he's buried alive in my parents' backyard."

Rory considered this. "Grandma, along with everyone in Stars Hollow, seems to be ignoring my condition, as if it's just temporary, and it's going to go away. I may not know why, but what I do know is that Dean isn't likely to be slaughtered until after there's constant-crying, diaper-sporting evidence that they can't ignore. I think he's safe for now."

Lorelai pursed her lips. "Honey..."

Rory raised her eyebrows.

Lorelai shook her head. "Never mind. I guess you're right. Go find Dean. We've got to get going."

--

Feet in lipstick-red high heels stopped along with Lorelai's upper half as she sagged her shoulders, stunned. "Hm. I don't remember requesting a chauffeur."

"What can I say? Rory paid me," Dean said flippantly from the driver's seat of the little Gilmore jeep, drumming his fingers lightly on the steering wheel.

"That's funny, 'cause the last time she paid me to be the driver was so long ago, I think I'll call it never."

"Look." Dean shifted uneasily, fidgeting with the lock on the car door. "I can't just show up at Rory's grandmother's house after impregnating her granddaughter without the slightest plan about where to go from here."

"The only people who formulate plans by driving a car are international men of mystery with gadgets installed that tell them what to do. And believe me, not even those gadgets could manage to please the likes of Emily 'it is only acceptable to do things when I do them myself, and yet that still does not make you worthy of such actions' Gilmore."

"Dean, is Mom being a pill?" Rory asked good-naturedly as she exited the house and entered the passenger side of the jeep.

He smiled. "She's being her usual rainbow of adjectives."

"I'll admit it: I was being a rainbow pill. One that makes you hallucinate and dream of governing unicorns."

Rory flipped open her cell phone. "And the number to the psych ward is..."

"You'd think one of you would have it on speed dial -- now what I was thinking is," Dean spoke all of one breath without pause for the bickering that would come, "that we would take an outside route to Hartford. There are some dirt paths that have some pretty nice, calming scenery that might inspire us to agree, between the three of us, on a name for this baby. And then we could have at least one of Ms. Gilmore's questions answered, for the sake of my conservative hide."

He raised his eyebrows at the silence that met him. "What do you think?"

Lorelai raised her hand, loving that in one simple gesture, any situation could be made into a classroom. "If I'm going to have to sit in the back seat, I want to be a backseat driver. I'm gonna need an actual steering wheel and a waiver signed taking all responsibility of a possible car crash off of me and my very practiced cabbie imitations."

"Talking about my unborn baby being in a car crash -- do you mind?" Rory tsked gently, then stepped out of the jeep in order for her mother to climb into the back seat.

"Loving the lack of space. It's like a wanna-be trunk back here. Oh, look. I can almost straighten out my neck. Oops, wait -- false alarm."

Parenting mode intensifying by the comment, Rory got back into her own seat and slammed the door behind her. "No more complaining, you, or no cocktail at Grandma's! Now, be a good girl and attempt to honk us to death with your playskool steering wheel."

"A prop! I can't believe there was room for me, **and** a prop! Too bad for the neck thing, but ooh!" Lorelai set about checking out the limited gadgets on the toy made for children three and under. "This was yours, wasn't it, babe?"

"Mhmm."

"I always did enjoy playing with your toys more than you did."

Rory smiled at the memory as Dean smiled at the thought. "I know."

---

"I spy with my big gorgeous eyes something... dirty." Lorelai honked the horn of her special steering wheel to punctuate her contribution to the game she had just instigated.

"Couldn't be the road, could it?" Rory asked dryly.

"It **is** made of dirt," Dean reasoned, having noticed the clouds of it sent swirling into the air with every glide of the jeep's tires. Other than leaving a trail of cough inducer in their wake, he loved everything about driving these old country-esque roads. There were a very rare few, and these were the ones he chose to covet in the first days of his marriage. He'd drive up and down the dirt-paved pathways at night, after Lindsay had fallen asleep, her lips sporting smiles from her dreams. She dreamed of their happiness together while he tormented himself with thoughts of the one he left behind, and did anything to get away.

Lorelai crossed her arms over her chest. "Stupid dirt. Stupid road. Stupid all-there-is-out-here."

"Could this r--road be an--y more b--um--mpy?" asked Rory irritably.

"Oh, yeah!" With that, Dean floored the gas pedal, and headed straight for a shallow pothole, taking care in his speed so as not to cause harm to the fetus passenger. The Gilmore girls screamed, first in dread, then in delight at the moderate bounce the car was able to generate.

Dean enjoyed their impressed giggles while they lasted, and then tried to avoid the cringe thing when Lorelai said, "Way to tear up my car, buddy. See if I tip you after that one."

Rory shared a secret smile with him at that, something she so seldom did anymore. His heart flip-flopped like a fish out of water, beating its fins into his ribcage, as if demanding his heart be let out so that he could give it to her.

The moment was so short-lived he died a tiny death inside. When Rory's eyes darkened and she turned away to focus on the scenery that had nothing to be seen, Dean cleared his throat. This, to rid it of sap and pain manifesting in a higher pitch that wanted to take place in his voice.

"Driver, Sir," put in Lorelai, "are we anywhere near Hartford, 'cause I didn't bring any distractions for a long car ride, and the car stereo's broken. Just a pre-warning that you're about five minutes away from the 'Are we there yet?' chanting that I take credit for inventing."

"You so did not invent that," Rory scoffed.

"But I pimped it like crazy! Give a girl credit here. And by the way, you didn't invent the 'I'm pregnant so leave me alone about my moodiness' excuse."

"You're going to claim that one, too?"

"I'm afraid that honor goes to the very first Gilmore, and spirals all the way down to me."

"Hartford's around here somewhere, I promise..." Dean squinted at the slowly setting sun, focusing on it as though it would reveal answers to the many questions plaguing him. "We'll find it eventually. I just haven't been on this back road for a while.

"So, about the baby. Ultimately, I think you and I should make the name decision together," he said, nodding at Rory. She nodded back. "But since you didn't like my ideas, what do you think we should name the baby?"

Rory thought briefly about it. "Clark."

"Gable or Kent?" questioned Lorelai.

The tires sighed over tightly-packed dirt and gravel.

"Diana," Rory blurted.

"As in Royalty or Ross?"

"This is getting us nowhere," Dean complained.

Lorelai quirked an eyebrow. "Kind of like your sense of direction."

--

Dean's hurried whispers were shushed first by one Gilmore girl and then the next, both mother and daughter ignoring his pleas to not be a part of this. "It's okay, baby," Rory soothed with a very unconvincing Cheshire cat grin on her face. "And if things turn violent, well, that's what lawyers are for."

Dean's helpless eyes and mouth gone slack weren't even given the chance to receive their desired effect as the front door to the Gilmore home was opened just then. Emily, fire in her eyes gone dead from lack of spark, attempted a smile and failed. "Do come in," she invited, stepping aside.

"Where's the maid, Grandma?"

"Really, I don't know. She doesn't answer me unless I call her by her given name, and it's always Richard who can remember their names that have little significance to me. Oh, Richard..." She looked around woefully, then seemed to regain what composure she had on this day, and faced her guests once more. "You'll have to hang your own coats in the closet. Oh, what a mess I must be today. I've never felt so sloppy."

Lorelai handed her coat to Dean, who hung it up for her, as well as Rory's. "Yeah, Mom, you've really gone downhill. What, did you only manage to brush your hair 99 strokes this morning? And your skirt -- wow, you didn't iron it the third time, did you?"

"I know," Emily agreed, distracted and yet listening all the same. "It's terrible..."

As she migrated into the sitting room for drinks, the bewildered crowd of three followed behind.

Rory hated to ask but, "Have you heard from Grandpa at all?"

Emily was at the drinks cart, mixing vodka, gin, whiskey, and God knows what else into one concoction. "No, not a word at all," she said bitterly, dropping two ice cubes into her glass with a _clink_. "I call this new mix _venom_. Would anyone else like a drink?"

The words "martini", "Coke", and "club soda" went in one ear and out the other with nothing registering on Emily's frazzled brain. With a sip of her _venom_, and an uncharacteristic wince at its taste, she sat on the couch next to Lorelai, ignoring the drink requests made.

Lorelai and Rory stared at Emily with puzzlement in their faces, understanding nothing -- not even if this was a breakdown or merely a mood swing. Dean just watched Rory, unsure if Emily had even recognized his presence, and awaited his cue to leave so he could finally let a breath out.

There was so much silence. Typically this was Lorelai's cue to drop a bomb, or sing a song, or describe her desire to recreate selected scenes from 'Jackass'. Realizing this, the monotony was finally broken. "Oh!" she said, so abruptly that it caused Emily to jump in her seat and spill what remained of her drink.

"Lorelai, what in God's name was that -- "

"Funny you should mention names, Mom! Because we have got the names to end all names for you."

"They're possible names for the baby," Rory clarified.

"Oh." Emily sat back in her seat. "The baby. Of course."

"Um." Dean scooted noticeably closer to Rory to whisper in her ear. "Do I have to be here for this? It seems like a bad time for you two to pull your... antics."

"Nonsense, it'll cheer her up." Rory patted Dean on the hand and turned her attention to Lorelai, who was now standing front and center, happy to have gathered everyone's attention. Of all the names stamped with "whore" on the end of them, "attention whore" was Lorelai's favorite. At least until another name caught her _attention_.

Lorelai sighed, closing and re-opening her eyes for deep effect. "Naming a baby is a very important task if you take it to heart," she recited, her voice somber. As if removing a mask, her face lifted, as did the energy in her voice. "Or it can be a deliriously funny opportunity to try to make it into the tabloids!"

Emily brought a hand to her forehead, mumbling, "Oh, God..."

"And so, we bring you 'celebrity rip-offs'. First on the list, an ode to 'Friends', let's call the baby Lorelai, Jr. Jr."

Dean was rubbing his eyes, perhaps trying to temporarily render his senses useless. "I believe the junior is a guy thing."

"Sexist," Rory interjected. "And now, for all of the mothers naming their children after countries and cities -- America... Paris... I bring you: Iceland!"

"Of course, we'd move south, to make it ironic. People would ask the kid where they were born, and they'd have to say it was 'Right on the equator'." Lorelai giggled. It didn't seem to bother her in the least that the only one joining her, and in fact, still listening, was her co-conspirator and daughter.

"To add to the fruit and vegetable section of the baby book, as that can't be left alone these days," Lorelai continued with a roll of her eyes, "we bring you the future Prune. You don't really like her, but when you need her, oh **boy**, are you ever thankful she's there! Oh, and also Steak. Had to consider that name if it turned out to be a burly one."

"Moving right along," Rory flowed, realizing their audience wasn't held so captivated, "there's the almighty combining of names. Our favorite? Emily plus Richard equals Emard. Kind of makes you think of an awkward llama-type animal in the desert. Now can I ask, how much more unique do you get than that?"

"Oh, daughter of mine, you have much yet to learn. The uniqueness will come not only from the name, but from the nickname. Inspired by one of the great comic artists of all time, Mr. Carrot Top, I've concocted catchy 'call me!' endearments that include food as well as body parts. Just imagine it: 'Hey, where's Broccoli Bottom? Can't start the party without him!' And, 'We can't have a proper taste test without Tomato Tongue. It just doesn't work, man!' Bam! Instant popularity."

"Girls..." Emily sighed, and downed the last of her drink.

"I wish I had a Tomato Tongue," Lorelai put in.

--

The slam of the door sounded so final, somehow much more so than Emily's prior, "I now have something to blame tomorrow's headache on. Get out."

"Wow," Lorelai said at last, after staring at the door became boring. "We didn't even have to stay for dinner."

"Luke's?" Rory suggested.

"Actually, I'm feeling kind of curious about what else is out there. Let's experiment! What do you guys feel like eating?"

Dean grabbed his stomach that was gnawing at itself. "Anything but broccoli and tomatoes."

- -  
to be continued…


	11. Fevered Dreamer

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Oh, please! I need it like the Gilmores need coffee! This is my first multiple chapter story, so anything you have to say would be much appreciated.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Beta: Elyssa, and oh, how can I thank her for the wisdom on this chapter? Elyssa, I took your words to heart, and hopefully created a situation more believable. Thank you so much.  
Author's Note: This chapter's a scary venture for me. It needs to hit you in just the right way, and I'm hoping that the way I've constructed things will work in this experiment of mine. Let me know.

**Chapter Ten: Fevered Dreamer**

- -  
_She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue._

Blue as Ms. Patty's scarf that she kept rewrapping around herself, perhaps in the hopes of swooping up some young man and trapping him between the material and her body. Rory gave little thought to this as she stared at her half-eaten burger and mound of fries going cold on the table before her. Beyond her focus was Dean, carefully chewing his fries that had gone cold as he waited for Rory to join him in the enjoyment of their meal, eventually giving up and eating on his own, all the while looking at her as she was lost somewhere in another universe.

"I'm tired," Rory finally announced. She glanced at the counter, where Lorelai had brought a blush to Luke's face that he tried frantically to hide. "I'm going home."

"I'll go with you," Dean said.

"Okay."

--

She lay in the hospital, her abdominal muscles host to some horrible, unearthly-like pain.

She pushed and pushed, wanting to scream from the stabs in her gut. But there was something holding her mouth closed, gagging her, like cotton swabs shoved down her throat. Butterflies laying eggs in her windpipe. It was as if her voice box had been torn out.

Something was wrong, and they cut into her with a special surgeon's knife. The hurt of it was hellish, and her eyes burned till they turned red.

She felt every stitch of pain, but still, she could not scream.

_Something is wrong, where have I come to, where am I going, why am I lost_.

The abdominal pain squeezed her insides, inserting a pressure cooker between her ribcage and pelvic bone. And suddenly, a baby was born. They wrapped it in a blanket.

_What isn't it crying_?

She was sticky with sweat that looked like blood.

She tried to forget everything else, that she couldn't say hello, or smile, as the baby was handed to her. She tried to forget that something was wrong.

She pulled back the blanket to see its face, and found a large rock, like the one in the pit of her stomach, beneath the cover. Try as she did, she couldn't scream.

"Where is my baby?" she was dying to ask, to questioningly accuse, over and over.

But then she was simply dying, slipping, slipping, and fading away.

--

Someone was pinning her limbs to the mattress, stilling her while her body went wild! Frightened, furious, she opened her eyes.

"Rory! Stop it, stop. Wake up," Dean pleaded. His voice was strained, as if he'd been saying similar things in this loud a pitch for some time now.

She didn't know what else to do but to continue to fight his restraints of her body, and let those horrific screams bubble up from somewhere deep in her belly, where she hoped something still grew.

"Stop... stop..." His voice was breaking, splitting into pieces like the insides of her brain. And she forced herself to stop the strangled cries, the 'Exorcist' bodily impressions.

Things weren't so whole in this moment. They were more like an unsolved Rubik cube, scattered and in need of greater help than was being given.

--

Her eyes worked to focus on the unruly four year-old that stood before her. "I hate you!" her child screamed.

She saw herself screaming, closing it all out, crouching in a ball in the corner of a room filled with an old crib, a changing table, a mobile singing its wordless song while she covered her ears and closed her eyes.

The child kicked furniture, dented the walls with small sneakers. Reinvented the term "out of control".

Dealing was not a thing in the cards as her maturity shrank until it collided with the holes in the plaster decorating the room all around her. She screamed along with the child, and it couldn't be determined whose vocal chords were the winner.

But still, the mobile's tune played on.

--

Rory couldn't keep her eyes open, though she fought the droop of her eyelids like crazy. She didn't want to keep visiting these worlds in which she was alone with her terror and futures that she couldn't handle or control.

Three days in bed, thrashing around on the sheets, hair tangling on the pillow, cold sweats soaking her pajamas and the sheets. Miserable days, in which she felt alone, even when her eyes were open, and Dean was there, his expression clouded, his lips closed, now afraid of everything he might say.

--

She saw a toddler, running before her on the expanse of a beach, squealing with laughter as she laughed, too, running to catch up. Everything was beautiful -- the ocean waves, the tiny footprints in the wet sand.

Suddenly something grabbed her ankles from behind, and she fell, her face smashing into dozens of seashells that cut into her skin so that she would never look the same again. No one would recognize her with her scarred features. Her throat muscles tightened up, restricting any sobs as blood rose from the many cuts and pooled in puddles beneath her face, her crushed, broken features.

And when she looked up, her baby was gone, gone.

--

Rory couldn't run her fingers through her hair, short though it was, when finally after eighteen hours straight, she climbed out of her bed and stepped outside of her room. Seeking comfort, company, something other than the insane things painted on her dreamful brain.

It was past nine in the evening as she approached her mother in the kitchen.

Lorelai looked up from her humongous stack of junk mail to notice the circles under her daughter's eyes. "Wow, have you ever slept? Ever?" she asked, straight to the point. "In your lifetime?"

Rory's voice was scratchy, still sleepy in her response. "Help me out here: do you always flatter me so?"

"Only when you deserve it."

Nods were a difficult thing on the stiff neck that Rory nursed with a rubbing hand as she took a seat next to Lorelai at the kitchen table.

"I was wondering when you were going to make your grand re-entrance into life," Lorelai said, and then her voice gained the concern that had been missing in the conversation. "Dean and I have been really worried. But every time he wakes you up, he gets a severe slapping, and I haven't been able to go into that room, hearing the tales he's been telling me...

"What is it you're so upset about, hun?"

"Bad dreams," Rory offered simply, as if any of it was that simple. "Where is Dean?"

"He's camped out on the couch. I've been leaving him alone for the few short hours he'll sleep every day, when he can stop worrying about you for enough seconds to let his subconscious close his eyes."

Rory sighed. "I miss him whether I'm asleep or awake."

"You miss him being the pincushion." Lorelai grinned.

"No." Rory was so serious, her sighs long and grating. "Did you ever have bad dreams, when you were pregnant with me?"

"God, yes. I'd have ones where I was drunk when I signed the birth certificate, naming my daughter 'Nathan'. I'd have ones where you came out of me with a cone head. Easy to push out; harder to deal with in the end. Those were the dreams when I had to name you 'Nathan' to take the focus off of the obvious.

"And then there was this one dream. I went to the cupboard, and there were no more jelly beans! _You had eaten them_! Which was so freakishly incredible, because you had done it while inside of my belly without my knowing about it."

Lorelai couldn't read the disgruntled expression on Rory's face, and even if she could, she wouldn't have been able to understand the depth of what it meant. Rory saw her mother's life as being full of roses, while hers was currently spliced with thorns. She saw no point in voicing this, and in defeat, she headed back to her room.

"Hun?" came the hesitant voice from behind her.

Rory stopped walking, as only a few more steps would take her out of her mother's vicinity. "Yeah?" she asked without turning around.

"Maybe we should think of something to help you get some real rest. Because, babe..." Lorelai's voice was so concerned that Rory didn't need to be facing her to absorb the emotion. "I'm worried about you."

She sighed. "Like pills?"

"Your grandmother's suggestion. Of course, she was in the throes of a major hangover ala those ingenious _venom_ creations at the time, so her sanity was even less visible than usual..."

"Find a time when I'm too tired to pelt you with the little pills in your hand. I guess I have to go back to sleep eventually." Rory craned her neck to squint at her mother out of the corner of her eye. "But prepare for a wrestling match if I'm not ready yet."

And back to her room she trekked, leaving Lorelai with the idea of following her own mother's hasty suggestions swirling to a whirlwind in her stomach.

--

After three days of nothing but sleep, Rory refused to sleep for the next three. Terrified of her dreams, of the fact that they were coming from her subconscious and robbing her of all spirit, she forced her eyes to stay open, only allowing them to close in short blinks.

On the third day at noon, the knock at her open bedroom door reverberated, echoed, off the empty walls in her skull. "Rory?" came the voice, so slowly into focus.

She turned around in the chair at her desk. "I am Jack's comatose spirit." Her voice was raspy, her throat dry. She took another sip of her water, eyeing Dean and his confusion.

He kept being careful around her in her waking hours, tip-toeing around her skeletal structure as though it would soon burst into sand. She couldn't say that his position was a wrong one to take, as she, in her mental stupor, kept poking at her wrist bones, wondering how things so skinny could support a hand's weight, let alone the appendage of a filled coffee mug.

His steps weren't as careful this time as she stretched to raise a brow, wanting to tell him... something. Surely there was... something, she needed to say. He reached her, and lowered himself in a crouch, looking up at her face as she sat in the chair, focusing on looking back at him.

Wetting his lips, his adoring gaze turned sour with worry or perhaps guilt of some kind, he asked, "How are you?"

"Tired." It was honesty, and mostly all that she could comprehend.

Dean nodded at this. He was aware of the hours she was clocking. "Why don't you go to sleep?"

She tilted her head, her eyes meeting his as squarely as she could, though it was much like being drunk and having to touch your nose with your finger. And she just gave him that stare, the one that she hoped he could read. He always was good at reading her. It made her feel special, like one of those books she hadn't been able to focus on for a week now. She missed her books. But though her mind wandered, she stilled her gaze, making it a goal to continually focus on Dean's eyes. The wet eyes that held a sheen, like the evenly separated screen of a sprinkler, holding back the rest of the droplets. Was he trying not to cry for her?

"Rory?"

"Your eyes are like the ocean."

She couldn't tell if he guffawed, or coughed, or choked on a sob as his head snapped down, taking his face away from her view.

"The color..." she tried to explain. "It's blue, and like... also green."

"Rory," and his voice was a sob. He wouldn't look at her anymore. She clicked her tongue in sympathetic fashion, and reached her hands out to him. Unsatisfied when they wouldn't reach beyond the chair, she slid off of the chair, and fell as gracefully as possible beside his bent knees. She took his head in her hands, and hugged it to her chest. And she thought. She groped for her intelligence.

She swallowed deeply. "Dean..." She kissed the top of his head, her lips landing somewhere in the middle of that gorgeous mop of hair. Three times quickly she pecked, and then the fourth time, she let her lips linger, the smack sound coming off silent as she pulled away. "Look at me, because... it's too hard to understand anything when you're not looking at me and telling me why. Why any of this is happening."

He looked at her then, his head held captive in her confused grip, grimy tears apparent on his face. "I'm going to tell Lorelai that we shouldn't give you that sedative again."

"Was that the pretty pink pill that I took with chocolate milk?"

"Look what it's doing to you... And still you don't sleep."

"Is that why..." She frowned and thought. "Is that why I'm all Johnny Depp on acid, and quoting 'Fight Club' randomly when nothing else makes sense?

"Captain on acid... He was a Pirate." She giggled nonsensically. The desperate way Dean looked at her made her stop with that noise.

"You know what's funny?" She didn't know why she kept talking, why she couldn't stop. "That pill looked a lot like birth control." Now there was no stifling of her giggles. There just was no hope of taking that one away from her.

Dean sighed, and now suddenly she was tired again. He gently took hold of each of her hands, pulling them away from the sides of his face. He laced her fingers around his back side so that she leaned into him, and she rested her cheek on his chest as he pulled her into his lap. And held her there.

"You need to sleep again," he said in a soothing, calming voice that rumbled just slightly from his chest cavity, no longer stirring the echoes in her brain. She figured if she could stop things from stirring in there, eventually her head would stop feeling like soup.

"Rory?"

She inhaled his scent. "I don't want to..."

His voice was a whisper now, and he rubbed gentle circles along her lower back. Her clasped fingers felt heavy, and she fought to keep them from separating and falling to the carpet.

"I'm afraid," she told him meekly, sorting through her thoughts, trying to remember why she had the priorities that were set.

"I know," came his whisper. "But you can't stay awake forever."

The sedated part of her brain had arguments that were buried in heavy, fuzzy snow. She didn't open her mouth to protest again, and after eight more minutes of the slow circles Dean drew on her back, the last thing she comprehended was the feeling of moisture as his lips touched her neck in "Goodnight".

--

Three a.m. came, and after a dreamless sleep, Rory hurriedly untangled herself from Dean's sleeping limbs to rush to the bathroom, making it just in time. Up came her chocolate milk, some macaroni and cheese, and something tinted pink. Up came a great deal of liquid from some depths way down inside of her.

Dean, unafraid of seeing her sickly times, snuck into the bathroom to quietly plop down beside her, as she retched and retched. They'd had the conversation before, about how seeing or hearing someone puke equaled the urge to puke, according to Rory. But things just weren't that way with Dean. This was one time of many that he'd sat beside her, his presence meant to soothe her in her pain.

Rory finished with her vomiting, tears of exertion trailing down her face. She groaned, a long, lingering sound, then placed an arm over the toilet seat on which she placed her head. Looking weakly to Dean, her voice was winded and small as she said, "What?"

Dean couldn't seem to swallow, for God, she had never looked quite like this. "We're gonna have a baby," he said.

Rory found a hint of a smile from somewhere deep within her. "Yeah... I guess we are."

--

She was vomiting again, and Dean was nowhere to be found. There was nothing but terror in the screams that tore out of her throat with every retch that she endured.

And out came a baby, straight from her windpipe, up her throat. She gagged out some final fluid, and then gasped, clutching at her neck, seeking air to breathe, to calm.

The baby in the water, she encountered as she looked down, would barely tip the scale to three pounds. It was like a baby doll, covered in red slime, and stomach fluids. As it wailed and flailed its limbs in the contaminated toilet water, she thought, "It's too small. It wouldn't survive anyway."

It wouldn't survive anyway, and so she sat there, some force holding back her savior limbs, and let it drown.

--

Dean sat in the dark of Rory's bedroom as she made whimpering sounds in her sleep. The stars sent weak illumination in from the window, to highlight his olive t-shirt and boxers. The gloom of the moment threatened to overtake him until he was whimpering, himself, eyes open only to a dreamscape of madness.

He leaned his head back in Rory's desk chair, reliving the moment when he could see his baby on the ultrasound screen, until the doctor pressed a button, and tore the picture away.

- -  
to be continued...


	12. Cabbage Patch Kid

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Are you reading this, and conjuring any thought in return? I'd appreciate to know.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Beta: Elyssa, thank you ever so.  
Author's Note: Just... enjoy.

**Chapter Eleven: Cabbage Patch Kid**

- -  
_She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned blue._

Blue as the Connecticut summer sky, painted with white puffs of clouds like shredded cotton balls, on the day when Rory finally awoke with a headache not so severe. Dean had taken to sleeping in her desk chair, set to face her at the end of her bed. His limbs rigid, body without the comfort of blanket or pillow, he slept now, as he'd slept for a week. As if he was keeping an eye on her, even with those riveting eyes closed.

After examining the dark circles rimming her haunted eyes in the vanity mirror, Rory glided over to the chair at the end of her bed and looked down on Dean with a sigh. Of all the comforts absent from her nightmares, he was the one she missed the most.

She grieved for the state of his joints, with the position he'd been sleeping in for so many nights now. The chair was not nearly comfortable enough to serve as a bed. He might as well be sleeping on a prison cot. Her heart broke wide open as he furrowed his brow in sleep, just slightly, and even as she waited, the frown didn't relax. Morbidly, she let herself wonder what it was that he was seeing in dreams; morbidly, she worried that what he saw rivaled her own tormented visions.

"No..." he grunted vaguely in his sleep, his voice so slight, as if he were out of breath. His head, positioned haphazardly on his left shoulder, slumped down a micro-inch further toward his chest. His beautiful bronze chest that called to Rory's fingers, sending the pads of them to tingling, calling her skin to touch his. She so hesitated to wake him up, knowing that he should get rest while he could, for whatever she was going through, it seemed he was continually plunging right down with her. Following her into the hell that was building with every fresh closure of the eyes.

She couldn't resist it, and she did touch him, with just her humming finger pads. She pressed them gently to his collarbone, and dragged them lightly over the span of his pecs, down his chest that rose and fell in soft unconscious breaths. Her eyes inhaled his beauty while she soaked up his body's warmth. His spider eyelashes rested peacefully on his chiseled cheeks; the lashes trembled as Rory's own breath crept too close. She couldn't help it; suddenly she was magnetized by him, the idea of looking at him when he wasn't seeing her; when he couldn't look into her eyes and know how vulnerable she was to his face, his chest -- the downy treasure trail, the cheeks with hints of dried tear streaks, and those long lashes below the smooth eyebrows.

He radiated sex, even in slumber; he radiated love, without having to speak its name. He was her beautiful broken boyfriend, and she had exhausted him with her drama that was dragging them both through the mud.

She traced the sexy grooves in his abdomen, her tongue sneaking out to wet her lips gone dry. Her throat felt as though it had been clawed as she swallowed the saliva growing in her mouth, and she moaned slightly from the pain.

And then his lashes fluttered of their own volition. "Rory?" he asked, somewhere between reality and dreams. "Are you there?"

"Shh," she silenced him, immediately regretting the bother she'd now brought to him. She should know when to stay away. "I'm sorry," she whispered, "please go back to sleep?"

"Baby...?"

Her heart stopped at that epithet, loving it instantly, knowing that she would hate to hear it from anyone else. She wasn't one for pet names, and in wakefulness, neither was he. Some part of her loved being called what they had created together. She wanted him to say it in lieu of her name, again and then once more.

A sleepy sigh escaped his lips, and he changed positions slightly, letting his head roll to his other shoulder. Slumping back into slumber, his lips formed a slight pout that begged to be kissed. But she was intent, now, of leaving him be.

She really was.

So it was much to her consternation that five minutes later her bottom was placed gently in the space of the chair between his spread legs. She could find no other place in the bedroom where she could be near enough to him to concentrate on anything _but_ him. Anything that was happening to them both. She needed to feel the skin of his inner thighs touching her outer thighs just slightly, giving her goosebumps in the way their skin only ghosted together in her need to not disturb his slumber.

Finally, having his body so near, she could concentrate on the laptop she had set on the mattress before her. She was investigating Google and its knowledge of any sort of correspondence classes offered at Yale. Life was doing its best to drag her backwards, making it as difficult as possible for her to stay in one place, let alone move forward. This Google search was her effort today. Her "maternity leave" from the school grounds didn't have to mean she left the school entirely... this she hoped.

"Come on..." she mouthed at the computer screen, willing this to be possible. _Come on..._

Dean's breath exhaled deeply, and suddenly arms slid around Rory's waist from behind. She exhaled herself, closing her eyes in gratification she could not deny. "Baby?" she whispered, liking the sound come from her lips just the same.

"Mm." His lips pressed against the side of her neck in a sensual kiss that revealed the gentleness in him that was always displayed for her -- from his lips, from his hands, from his eyes that looked on with those fluttering eyelashes.

"I'm sorry I woke you up." Her voice was nothing more than a breathy whisper, louder tones held captive by the strong arms encircling her, body and soul. Despite her heart's throbbing protests, she began to rise from the seat they shared. "I'll let you get back to..."

"Don't you dare," was his whisper to match hers, and without letting go, he pulled her in to his body more snugly. He settled his face on the back of her neck, kissing the bone that marked the top of her spine. He then rested his face on that very spot, eyes closed, slipping back into dreams.

She loved it, being held onto this way. She loved it.

--

"Hi, Mom," Rory said monotonously as she emerged from her bedroom, decked out in rubber-ducky-spotted PJs and Stewie Griffin slippers.

"Nice shoe accessories," Lorelai noted from the breakfast table where she held a full pot of coffee hostage. "Hoping they'll aid you in birthing the baby from hell?"

"You got a problem with Stewie?"

"He's... a mean baby. And downright rude."

"Could've been Cartman slippers."

"Cartman is my _hero_."

Rory nodded, knowing these things, or at the very least, knowing to expect them. "You only like Cartman because you didn't have to raise him yourself."

"S'what I say to people about you."

"Mmm." Rory nodded in the affirmative, comprehending little other than the way her skin was still tingling from the touch of _his_. Though she did notice the self-indulgent way her mother was coveting the entire stash of rich brown liquid. "Gimme some coffee."

"But it's mine..."

"Gimme it."

"People would be saddened to see our intellect in the waking hours."

"I am devoid of coffee. They would understand my side. And on your side, there'd be... Cartman."

"_And_ Luke."

"If you say so." Rory grabbed herself a large mug of garish decoration and dared to touch the coffee pot. When Lorelai allowed this action without a fight, Rory smiled smugly and drenched the inside of the mug, to the top until almost overflowing. "I have a theory."

"Only one? Me thinks the fetus inside of you is slowly draining your brain matter and making it its own."

"Kind of like I did to you?"

Lorelai chewed on this thought for a moment, along with her cream-cheesed bagel. She thought it best to back down and remain buddy-buddy. "Let's hear this theory. Dazzle me, and snuff out 'The Big Bang'."

Rory sat beside her mother at the table, loving up the mug of coffee with every single finger wrapped around it. Long sips, and then, "These headaches I'm having? I think part of their cause is coffee withdrawal."

"Well, I'm no doctor. But I'd have to say you're completely right."

"So, what are we going to do about that? Whenever either of the boys are around, I'm denied this liquid that overpowers the number of blood cells in my body."

Lorelai nodded, knowing the way Luke and Dean had of snatching Rory's mugs from her mourning hands. "We could sneak it in through an I.V."

"Needles? Ew. I mean, ow." Dean entered the kitchen, sighed at what he saw, and gingerly took the half-full mug from Rory's hands. "I mean, now," she amended, winking conspiratorially at her mother.

Lorelai giggled good-naturedly. "We will defeat them yet." She ignored the sarcastic "puh!" that came from Dean as he poured the remaining coffee in the mug down the drain.

"What are you doing?" Lorelai demanded, springing to her feet. "Are you crazy?"

Dean thought about it as the coffee continued to pour down, past the sink, into the sewers. He regarded Lorelai with a humorous tinge in his eyes. "After living here the last few weeks? I'm not going to deny it without some psychological testing."

And the coffee from the mug was gone.

"I would've drank it!" Lorelai grouched.

"You should cut back on it, too," Dean said mildly, then left with the same wink she'd just seen from her daughter. Dear God, this kid was becoming a part of the Gilmore insanity more and more by the day.

"Rue the day we made you one of us," Lorelai grumbled as Dean smirked and headed toward the bathroom for a shave and a shower.

There was a short silence in mourning for the coffee that was lost.

"Anyway," Rory started eventually, body language slouched in defeat, "the headache does remain. Without coffee to help, I'm going to need some serious medication to get me through the day. Where's the Tylenol?"

"No taking Tylenol! Or any other drug you have to swallow, for that matter."

Rory looked at Lorelai strangely.

Lorelai widened her eyes. "Do you not remember the choking incident? Do I have to rehash it? Aah, what a vivid memory."

Rory's look remained the same.

Lorelai started coughing in an exaggerated way. "It's a real memory" -- cough, helluva cough -- "it's gotta be remembered."

"The trick is to swallow," Rory explained calmly, unmoved by such dramatics.

A few more coughs, real ones this time, after the strain placed on the throat, and then Lorelai relented. "You are absolutely no fun. Fine, endanger your life."

"Gladly."

Lorelai sneered at Rory's joking tone, and set off in search of the medication.

--

Under caffeinated and unshowered, Rory walked into the bathroom to find Dean in a swarm of lingering steam. He turned quickly to ensure the room's invader wasn't someone who shouldn't see him with only a single towel swathed about his wet hips. His expression changed from shocked to soothed in two seconds flat. Smiling sweetly, he beckoned Rory closer so that he could stroke her face and look into her eyes, assessing her strength for the day ahead.

She met the warmth of his smile. "Nice towel," she commented. "It was my favorite when I was six."

Dean blushed. "It was the last one clean, and... I like cats."

"Hello Kitty is the cat you like even if you don't ordinarily like other cats. My boyfriend has good taste. And I kinda always wondered what you'd look like in pink."

Dean's eyes were averted now in embarrassment. "Uh... now you know."

"How's my hair?"

Dean glanced at her uneasily. "It's looked better." Rory awaited a description. "You've got kind of a 'There's Something About Mary' thing going on..."

So said, Rory was now bathed in the same humiliation, and their twin blushes burned like brush fires of the face. Rory's thoughts seconds ago of offering to help dry Dean's glistening body were now clouded over by her desperation to hide every strand of hair on her head. Frantically, she tried to smooth it down with her hands, afraid to de-steam the mirror and see the horror that must be causing all of those half-giggles coming from the body beside her.

"You're a great big help, you know!" she informed him, trying in vain not to be won over by his smile that kept melting every block of ice she tried to shove between herself and her tormentor. "I'll bet your hair looks this bad all the time!"

His giggles rose to full-out laughter. "And you're forgetting the worst part," Dean reminded her.

"The worst part being?" she asked in a whine.

"This really was the last clean towel."

--

"For the last time, you look fine. Now, do you mind sitting in the back seat?"

Rory paused just slightly. "What? Why?"

"Well, I'd rather not be seen with you in public at this time," was Lorelai's dig.

Rory seethed as she climbed into the passenger seat _in front_ and slapped a baseball cap on her head.

"So, you're wearing Dean's clothes now, are you?" Lorelai teased.

"Oh, keep it up, and I'll give Dean back his hat and you can be accused of having the daughter with the atrocious 'fro until the memory of this day goes out of existence."

"What happened anyway, did a camel spit in your hair?"

"Mom..." Rory's eyelids drooped. "You know what would make me feel better?"

"Standing next to a picture of my hair in the '80's?"

"If a camel spat in _your_ hair."

Lorelai dug through her purse for the car keys, now that they were both seated in the vehicle, and Rory was fuming so outwardly that air conditioning was becoming a necessity. "Hun?" she said, as she found the keys, and slid them into the ignition. "You've got to start putting up road signs when your emotions change. 'Warning: Optimism Ahead' would be nice sometimes. ...Just as, 'Warning: Will Breathe Fire Even When Not Provoked' would be appreciated by those of us with hair for kindling."

"That last one was _so_ provoked," Rory argued.

"_So_ not the point."

Rory sighed. "I didn't realize I was so lethal. I thought you always knew I was kidding."

"I know that you're _not_ always kidding. So, what do you say? The road signs strategy a go?"

"I hate hormones."

"Well. Take it out on them once in a while, how's that?"

"Oh, that's right, because they're perfectly tangible."

"'Atta girl." Revving the engine, Lorelai floored the gas, and away the Gilmore girls drove from that house where Rory had been caged since the nightmares began, the nightmares that had yet to end.

--

The Paradise Boutique in Hartford loomed high and flush with the prettiest of pink tones. Rory stared in a mixture of awe and reminiscence as Lorelai parallel parked in front of the store and fed the parking meter. The store's name was displayed in the most feminine scrawl, the cursive of a refined hand. Ponytail low and hidden, baseball cap protruding past her face, Rory followed her mother inside the store.

"It seems smaller, somehow," Rory said, visibly turning her head to look at the training bras section as she passed it by.

"Nope, you've just gotten bigger. Way bigger."

Rory rubbed her belly that had begun to swell, stopping by the tiny pieces of underwear, the bras with cup sizes so miniscule, it was a wonder they existed. Truly, she preferred the immaturity of the patterns to many of the bras she wore nowadays. The bras in negative cup sizes with cows jumping over moons set in dark blue and starry skies; the yellow ones with "Superstar" written to settle across each underdeveloped nipple; most of all, the ones with the unabashed design of the American flag. Ah, to be naive and therefore still believe in your country.

"Maternity bras are over here, babe," Lorelai sang, just loud enough for the cashier and several customers to overhear and stare in Rory's humiliated direction.

She trekked over to her mother, wishing she had added sunglasses to her disguise. Big, clunky ones, with wide rims to make her look like an alien or a bug. Glasses with which to hide the sun and the stinging clarity of embarrassment in her eyes. Rory never was one for buying underwear, lingerie, or other such unmentionables. If it weren't for the fact that no two bras fit the same, she would buy any and all undergarments online.

"Mkay, this one's a nice one that you'll appreciate after a week full of roughly a thousand breast feedings. It has a small clip that you can unsnap to bear, you know, the breast. And then it can easily be snapped again, and off you are until the next diaper changing, after which the scream machine will be ready to eat again."

Rory stared as her mother dispensed such experience, stuffing her hands under her arms uncomfortably and looking around at the lack of variance in this particular bra section. Blah, beige, and more blah, all around.

Lorelai held a bra about three sizes too large up to the front of Rory's shirt, and though this bra was eggshell white and had a nice edging of lace, pressing it up to her body that way was making everything too close for comfort. Rory felt like everyone was still staring, and all were knowing that her boobs were going to inflate like pool toys.

"I have never been so... embarrassed," she announced, her voice low so that it would only reach her mother's ears.

Lorelai continued to press bras of very little variance in design up to Rory's chest. "I beg to differ, darling dear. Remember the first time I brought you here, and made the suggestion that, at twelve, it might be time to wear a bra like the big girls?"

Rory made a face. "I don't want to recall that memory."

"Mean Melissa from the sixth grade walked in and laughed at you because she'd been shopping for training bras 'three times now'."

"I was mature in response."

"You were mortified."

"Maybe I was mortified because you kept humming that spy music that was 'in your head' the entire time I was in the changing rooms."

Lorelai draped one bra over her purse, designating it a keeper, and continued to "fit" different designs to Rory's chest, estimating the sizes she might reach in a pregnancy that had just begun. "You said you didn't want anyone to know you were shopping for _bras_; I thought it might make you feel better if I gave the spy vibe. Like we were spies, to be unseen and unridiculed in our invisibility."

"I think that made the idea of growing breasts even more uncomfortable, Mom. Everyone within reach of the changing rooms was disturbed by your 'Mission: Impossible' theme song humming."

"Go ahead and deny the fact that by taking the focus off of you, I saved you some of the shame of growing orbs out of your chest." Lorelai gave her daughter a leveling eye. "And here I am choosing your maternity bras for you, estimating your future size very badly, rather than forcing you to swallow your 'pride' and go talk to the sales lady about it yourself. See what I do for you?"

Rory rubbed her lips together, smearing the chapstick all over her naturally plumped puckers. "So do we have what we need?"

Setting one more bra in the "positive" pile, Lorelai nodded. "Yeah, we can go."

After paying, the girls walked out together. "You sure have a lot of confidence in my boobs' ability to grow," Rory said.

"Consider it a compliment," Lorelai told her.

Rory nodded amicably, now that she was out of the store that so bothered her with burdens of memories and uncertain futures. "I do."

--

Back in the car again, arguments of a strange nature ensued.

"You're never going to be a grown up if you can't just grow up about these things, babe."

"Mom, can you not lecture? I just stood in a lingerie store with you for more than ten minutes, I feel deflated enough."

"I'm just saying, honey. Having a baby means growing up fast. You've always been mature for your age when it came to books, academics, witty and worldly comments. But you've got to learn to be okay with your body and its needs before you can be okay for another body and all that it's going to need from you."

"I'm growing up. I'm very grown. More mature every day -- hey, there's the new Disney Store!" Rory's face brightened into a huge smile, which she threw Lorelai's way. "We've been waiting for one of those to come to this state for how long now?"

"Longer than you've been born," Lorelai agreed, and promptly looked for a parking spot. Nothing better to cover the sour of this shopping trip with some sweet honey to soothe it away.

"Ooooh!" cried Rory as the doors slid open and revealed all the beauty of Disney and being a kid yourself, for all your life through. Lorelai echoed her sentiments, and both girls set off in a frenzy, pressing lots of buttons on the display models and contemplating how many toys they could make it out of here with that they wouldn't have to share entirely with the coming baby.

Lorelai smiled with a sheen of true happiness to witness a happy Rory, and her fascinating obsession with the giant stuffed animal pile, which she threw herself into, creating a perfect photograph opportunity. Rory adored being swallowed up in the plush softness, seeing the beast's Belle to her left, and Buzz Lightyear to her right, along with so many other memorable characters, preserved in toys you could hug to your chest forever and ever.

Climbing up and out of the plushy pit, Rory soared into it once again, this time face first. She loved to inhale the fabric of every stuffed plush and to hug it all whole, like children, to her bosom that swelled further with each passing day.

She was sitting in between Jasmine and Ariel when she pressed a familiar number into the keypad of her cell phone.

"I thought you were shopping," came the answer on the other end of the line.

"Dean! Oh, I am. I'm at the Disney Store. I've been inspired, and I think it's time we revisit the idea of baby names."

"While you're at the Disney store. No good can come of this."

"What do you think of Cinderella?"

"I think she had dainty feet."

"As a _name_, silly."

"I think she had dainty feet. And what if the baby's a boy?"

Rory processed this information, drunk on the idea of giving birth to a fairy princess or her fair love, the handsome prince. "Cinder," she offered at last. "The masculine Cinderella."

"Yes, Rory, I'll be so happy to introduce Cinder, my son, the cooled lava."

"Your sarcasm is not lost on me, mister. I think the idea's just fabulous."

She could hear in Dean's voice that he was amused. "Can I ask you something? What are you on?"

"Coffee withdrawal. See what you stealing my morning beverage brings out in me?"

Dean's smile widened from across the phone line. "I kind of like it."

"Then Cinder it is!" Rory announced triumphantly, and gave a giggle as she ended the conversation.

--

Shopping trip over, Rory came home to find that her boyfriend had stuck some towels into the washing machine, and then the dryer. He was truly becoming domestic. Or perhaps he always had been, but had been good at hiding it. She would have joked that he made a good housewife, but she was too touched by his aid in helping her to undo the 'fro that wouldn't go away without a good back-to-back shampoo scrubbing. The perils of tossing and turning surfacing in bed head are quite the frightening phenomenon.

She was so free with the kisses that warmed his lips and his eyelids and his jawbone before she whisked herself away to the bathroom where finally she could bathe and at least look like herself again. _Lather, rinse, repeat_, were the directions, which on this day she followed five times in a row. There was no such thing as a cleansing overkill after the way her hair had behaved due to the shock of so many tosses and turns on a pillow soaked through to its core with her miserable cold sweat.

Emerging clean and a vision of beauty unfathomed, she headed straight to the kitchen, where she bumped into Dean.

"How do I look?" she asked him, leaning against the counter and wishing for compliments.

"Clean," he told her. Then, stepping closer, he dared, "Maybe a little too clean." Placing his large hands on the bones of her hips, he inched her close to his body and sprinkled migrating hot breaths all along her face, finally planting his lips on her dainty little nose.

Rory smiled at such intimate attentions, but then her stomach rumbled. "Dean? Is there anything edible in the house?"

A bit disappointed that his charm hadn't won her over, Dean pouted just slightly. "Oh, right, of course. You're Rory; you're always hungry."

"I resent that," said Rory in as haughty a manner as she could conjure.

"Why?"

"Because it's true," she admitted with an impish grin.

Dean studied her face, his eyes bearing into hers intensely. "You're capturing this moment, aren't you?"

Playfully, Rory wrapped her slight arms around his bronzed neck. "What ever do you mean?"

"You're gonna write this down in your journal, you're gonna make it one of your lists: 'Top Ten Stupid Things Dean Said Today'." He could see in her eyes that she was shocked, surprised... and that he had her nailed. "I thought so."

"Stop reading my mind!" was Rory's only defense. "You're like Chlorine!"

"Excuse me?"

"Chlorine. The persona Mom takes on when she wants to be my personal fortune teller."

"Is she good at it?"

"No, no. That's part of her charm."

Dean answered affectionately, "That's all of her charm."

Rory grinned. "True."

"So do you..." Dean lovingly tucked a strand of Rory's hair away. Their eyes that locked shared a tender moment that could have lasted for long minutes uninterrupted, but a very pregnant Rory burst the bubble.

"Food first; kisses later."

Dean was smiling, enjoying having this again. "You are becoming such a tease."

"I know. Aren't I good at it?"

"Not really. But... it's part of _your_ charm."

"What are you saying?" Roy asked, her voice a bit weary.

"...I like it." There came a rumble deep in Dean's throat that morphed into a growl.

Rory more than noticed this. "Feisty, are we?"

"Very."

Despite it all, Rory groaned impatiently. "Fooooood."

Playing along, Dean remarked, "Look at you, you're wasting away!"

Dean attacked her with tickles until she giggled away all her oxygen supply.

Rory found a breath of air in one of her involuntary gasps. "Seriously! Me: dying of depravation."

Dean pouted his lip like he'd never pouted before. "No fun here."

"We'll have fun later."

Dean's eyelids flickered as he trained his eyes on her face, searching for truth. "You promise?"

"Depends on what we eat..."

He laughed, but maintained: "Promise?"

Rory bit her bottom lip and nodded. She whispered, "Promise."

Just then, Lorelai intruded on the moment and the sensual stare, making her way to the fridge. Examining its bare-as-bones contents, she turned her head to look at the two teens crowding her kitchen. "Did you take the last soda?" she asked of them both.

As Dean was much taller than Rory, she could not see the accusatory finger he jabbed over the top of her head. "She drank the last three," he insisted.

Rory gasped. "Dean!"

"The truth hurts, baby." And there it was again, that pet name that melted her into a puddle on the floor. But the puddle, nonetheless, was still hungry.

"So, there is a half-filled salt container and a bag of rice in the cupboard that's probably been living here longer than Rory," Lorelai announced. "Off to Luke's we go!"

--

The way Luke's face lit up upon seeing Lorelai emerge from the street in through the door with its jingling bell that announced her presence was not lost on Rory. Nothing of Luke's expressions around her mother was lost on her anymore. She longed for the kind of serenity those two had undoubtedly found in one another.

"So there are tacos on your menu now," Lorelai stated, as if Luke hadn't the faintest clue of the content of his own menus.

"Thought you said you wanted them. So I honored your request."

"Lukie Snookie, you are fantabulous."

"Use real words, please, and only my name, no who-haw to mangle it." Luke's tone insinuated a lecture, but the glow in his eyes showed something else. Showed, perhaps, that this argument was only a means to keep Lorelai interacting with him, as he hadn't seen her in at least a day.

"Aww..." Rory sighed, cooing at the adorableness of them.

"So, it'll be those tacos for me."

"Okay." Luke jotted it down on his order pad. "One or two?"

"Six."

Sighing, and not even ready to touch that one, Luke turned to Dean. "What about you?"

"Oh, uh, I'll just have a burger, I guess."

"And for you," Luke said, turning to Rory with the "are you okay?" eyes that she'd of late grown accustomed to. "Burgers or tacos?"

"Yes." She grinned.

"For starters, anyway," Lorelai made sure to add.

"People who use entrees as mere appetizers clog arteries until hearts stop beating," Luke informed them all before turning away. "Just so you know."

"Keep saying it, hun," Lorelai said to his retreating form. "Someday we've promised to pretend to listen."

Now behind the well-worn counter, Luke had something more to say: "You order enough for an army of men larger than he is." (And here he jutted his head toward Dean, who he rarely addressed personally.) "You'd be my best customers if you ever paid."

Lorelai giggled. To Rory and Dean, she declared, "See, and he's funny, too!"

--

"I love the person who invented the idea of ketchup, mustard, relish, and sautéed onions all on one burger," Lorelai announced as she stabbed at bits of hamburger that had dropped to the plate as she so gracefully inhaled her six tacos, professing to still "have room".

"Yeah," Rory agreed. "Some random guy, he sure made a great discovery."

"That's my favorite person in the whole wide world. Today, anyway."

"As opposed to the whole narrow world?" Rory challenged. "Why do people say things like that?"

"I think it's time you took your brain in for a tune-up," Dean offered, munching on a fry gone cold after all of the girls' conversation that spanned on into eternity.

Lorelai was quick to answer with her, "Thanks. That would be so sweet in the narrow world."

"Is that where you want to live?" Rory enquired, stealing more than a few of Dean's fries, for all of hers were gone.

"Totally. It is _so_ narrow. No fat people, anywhere!"

"What happens when women get pregnant?"

"Actually, the men get pregnant in this universe."

"Nice!" exclaimed Rory and her morning sickness that lasted throughout the day. "So what happens to the men when they get pregnant?"

"I'm suddenly wishing I didn't have ears..." Dean pushed his plate toward Rory for her to continue to devour and placed his forehead down on the pillow of his forearms resting atop the table.

Lorelai ignored the boy, as if he and his reproductive qualities did not matter, even in the wide world. "They explode."

Rory nodded. "Even better."

--

Rory slept nightmare-less for the first time in several nights. Dean held her in his arms the whole time, willing them away; more than that, willing them to be gone forever.

--

The next morning, there were plenty of clean towels, and Rory's hair was washed and fresh before lunchtime. She'd been alone, revising her well worn copy of 'Portrait of a Lady', lonely without Dean who was at Doose's, and needing the comfort of physical companionship in a way that she hadn't before. A strange thing it was, how she could feel so alone, when within the very depths of her body lie another.

She set off in search of some company. The kitchen was empty, as was the bathroom. Lazy and easily frustrated this day, she randomly yelled out, "Mom, where are you?"

"In here!"

"Where is here?"

"Where I am!"

"Can you describe your surroundings a bit?"

"Nope, sorry," said Lorelai from a room not far away. "Don't want to see you _that_ much."

Rory found her mother, at last, in the bedroom upstairs. "Let me just say that I adore your sarcasm and refuse to believe it to be anything else," she said to Lorelai, plainly and openly. She looked around the disheveled bedroom. "What are you doing? Ransacking your own private space for something you should know is placed where you put it?"

"Say something unscholarly, I dare you."

Rory cocked her head and met the challenge. "'Sup?"

"Good enough. So, homie. What I have been looking for, _it has been found_. Oh yeah."

Interested, Rory stepped further into the room. "You're holding it behind your back. Show it to me."

And out came the treasure: a 20 year-old cabbage patch.

"Remember this?" Lorelai asked, waving the doll from side to side in order to allow it to invade even Rory's peripheral vision. "I've found it at last! For experimental purposes."

"Oh, God," Rory intoned. "I thought I threw that thing away."

"You did. You were the villain, I was the hero. I saved her."

"That poor thing," said Rory. "What is that doll going to be subjected to, after all it's been through?"

"It's simple. It will be my model, as I show you how to properly put on a diaper."

Rory wrinkled her nose. "Mom... it's a doll. And that diaper you have on the bed? Will cover it from butt to neck."

"Do you want to learn or not?"

"Is it really that difficult?"

"We'll see."

"I think the term 'put on a diaper' is pretty self explanatory, thanks."

Nonetheless, Rory stood patiently by the bed while she watched her mother attach the diaper to the doll's tiny signature-decorated butt, listening to the warnings that it can't be "too loose, or it will fall right off", and that it "can't be too tight, or it will restrict breathing or provoke screams of discomfort". As Lorelai applied the sticky tabs in a way that gave the unliving doll room enough to "breathe" comfortably, Rory nodded along as if any of this information was vital in that it wasn't already known.

"What would I do without your cabbage patch models to display your expertise?" she asked her mother fondly.

"Now: to take the diaper off." Lorelai looked pointedly at her daughter. "A much messier and more serious matter." She displayed the trick of lifting the little butt after undoing the Velcro tabs, and wiping before removing the dirty diaper from beneath the baby, in order to catch every bit of "goop" before placing a fresh diaper in the old one's place.

Rory tried her best to stifle the yawn of boredom. This was supposed to be bonding time, right? She really was supposed to be riveted? What was wrong with her? At the moment, she didn't care to look into the psyche of it all. She stood and held her eyes open, even though the lids were heavy and begging for sleep.

Lorelai had fashioned up a special garbage can labeled "toxic waste". She moved to throw the cabbage patch's diaper away.

"What are you doing?" Rory asked.

Lorelai dumped the crumbled up wad into the "toxic waste" bin. "This diaper has been used."

"Not technically."

Lorelai pointed to the doll, now naked as the day its fabric was conceived and sewn together. "Do you know where this thing has been?"

Rory thought. She had taken the doll everywhere in her imaginary world -- to the pyramids of Egypt, to Babette's yard next door, to Cloud 9 (as well as clouds 1-8). And then one day, the doll, which had never been named, was thrown away, and attempted to be forgotten. It had gathered so many germs, the eight year-old in Rory had reasoned, and after being left outside in the midst of a spring storm, it seemed the doll's cloth body would never dry, and it was of no use to squeeze it tightly when all that would come of it would be squirts of dirty water to forever remind Rory that she had left her "child" out in the rain.

She cried that day, when she dropped her doll into the bathroom wastebasket. But soon afterward, the doll was replaced by a stuffed turkey that came to reign supreme, and take the place that it had seemed impossible to fill.

Lorelai bought the doll for Rory before she was born, _knowing_ that Rory was going to be a girl. ("This thing is older than you. And wise, very wise," often she would say.) She knew Rory would be a girl, for if she were a boy, or anything else but a unicorn, Lorelai would have given her back, she'd said in the past.

"To whom?" Rory asked her once.

"Who cares?" Lorelai had said bluntly. "I was drugged."

--

Disturbed by her mother's teaching methods, Rory retreated back to her room, and was surprised to find Dean there, home early from work. Her voice was soft and shaky, overtired and with a hint of a smoker's scratch. "Will you hold me?" she asked, in that way of weak girls that before she'd so often despised. Suddenly it wasn't so important to be so strong all the time. Not all the time. Not always.

"In a minute," he said. "Come here," he told her. When she reached his body, her fingers sought to touch his skin, any part of his skin, but he gently backed her away. "Just... stand there."

Rory stood still on her long legs. Her eyes soaked in the peculiarity of Dean crawling beneath her body until he was looking straight up her skirt and gazing at the crotch of her panties.

"You need a release?" he asked, and his voice sounded husky from so far down below.

Rory tried to swallow the self consciousness of him looking there, so intently. "Yes..." she admitted.

He reached a substantial arm up beneath her skirt until his hand touched her folds, blocked only by the zebra striped silk of her panties, and the last words he whispered were, "Okay."

With skilled fingers, he rubbed her through the material, stroking her into wetness that soaked through to his fingers that continued to tease. She gave a breathy sound, a whisper-like exhalation that betrayed the ecstasy she received from his singular touch. His touch that was barely there; the finger smoothly exploring the slit between her folds, coaxing it to drench the panties that were all that were there to separate his finger from her core that was screaming for him, calling to him, needing him like a drug.

Boldly, he slipped the finger inside the bottom lining of her panties, and found her clit, which he rubbed with the pad of a single thumb, slowly, agonizingly, lovingly.

Trembling with cold and heat mixed into a temperature unfathomed, she fought to keep her legs from crumbling; to stay on her feet. Until his finger exited her very special throbbing place, and with both hands he urged her hips to descend further towards his mouth, until she was practically sitting on his face. And there, he let his tongue lave her through her panties, loving the way that she trembled, loving the whimpers that escaped her mouth and throat because of him. Loving the way that she finally collapsed on top of him, hugging his waist and smooching at what lay beneath his own clothes at the crotch.

And then it was his turn to tremble and shake, until both of them were quaking and falling into an oblivion where they could be alone _together_. When they both stopped fighting the urge to give in, the ecstasy was all the greater for having been fought against. He felt it in his bones and knew that she had felt it in hers as she orgasmed, leaving the taste of her juices to rest on his starving tongue.

- -  
to be continued...


	13. Blue Skies Falling

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Is anyone still out there? I promised this fic would be finished, and believe me, despite my procrastinatory ways at their worst... it will.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Beta: Thank you, Elyssa. Very much.  
Warning: Dark themes this chapter, and how. It was an intense experience for me to write it. It may be intense for you to read it, as well.

**Chapter Twelve: Blue Skies Falling**

- -  
_When the bough breaks  
The cradle will fall  
And down will come baby  
Cradle and all_

Rory let her forehead rest on the car's window, her expression blank as she and her finger followed remnants of the afternoon's rain shower sliding down the outside of the glass. Though the drops had stopped pouring, the sun had yet to peek out from behind its cover of cloud. A coward, she thought the sun to be, hiding after the tantrum in the sky, unapologetic in its absence.

Dean waved briefly as he walked by the car, his eyes seeming so hesitant to look away from the girl in the front seat with raindrops matched up to fingertips. He could see a small cloud forming on the window from her puffs of breath that must be warmer than the day around them which should be ashamed to call itself summer. Raindrops still lingering in the folds of leaves overhead fell to soak the exposed part of his neck by his jacket collar. He put his hands in his pockets; tore his eyes away from the girl, the car, the frowning sky, and started toward Doose's to begin his afternoon shift.

Rory pressed her lips together as she watched him leave. She opened her mouth again to send a puff of steam onto the glass that held her fascination. It was as if her forehead were glued to it; she couldn't ignore the fatigue that gave resistance to movement.

She could hear Lorelai's voice changing octaves with different patterns in speech as she smiled and mocked into the cell phone pressed to her ear. Rory wondered when her mother would be finished bedeviling Luke and would join her in the car so they could leave their sad, drooping yard, and be on their way.

Chatterbox in her throat finally spent, Lorelai closed her phone with a giggle and got into the car. She eyed Rory as she turned the blasting heat down. "Why so glum, chum?"

"Tired," Rory told her. She turned to face her mother, damp strands of hair curling slightly and clinging to her face. "Can't we turn the heat back on? It's cold."

"It's July. You need a thicker skin."

"I'm hormonal."

"You act like that's an excuse for anything."

"If you were me, you'd agree."

"Looks like I'd also rhyme all the time," Lorelai put in as she switched the car's gears and started out of the Gilmore driveway.

Rory watched the scenery she'd been privy to thousands of times, a lost soul crawling through the small-town stores that gave way to busier streets on the way to Hartford. Though the windows were rolled up, she could hear the faint thundering going on above, serving as a warning of more rain. Why didn't the whole sky just fall? she wondered. Why didn't it just release itself and careen to the ground, wrap itself around her and teleport her to a better time in her life? Any other time would do. Third grade spelling tests or seventh grade biology: she could take it. She could take anything else. But not this.

Life was a waiting game while a fetus grew in her belly. The world held its breath as she underwent morning sickness that stretched on into evening, making the toilet bowl her only friend for long hours of the day. There was no one to save her from the labor pains that were gathering and waiting to pounce in half a year more. No one could feel this for her, not the physical part that stung the hardest, screamed the loudest. Pained her the worst.

Hartford's streets were slick with water. What a marvel that such tiny drops of moisture could soak a city entirely, given enough of them fell to their splashing deaths to spread into puddles of water that would dry and be forgotten. As if the small pelts had never been. The rain's presence felt so temporary while everything else around Rory was permanently fixed. Her future, her hardships, her physical pain. She could only hope the mental torture and fatigue would leave along with the infant's birth from her body.

"There's nothing more beautiful than a baby, you know," Lorelai said to interrupt thoughts of such misery and bring her daughter back to life. She glanced at Rory while steering the vehicle, though her attempts to elicit a smile did nothing to pull Rory's head from its place, crushed against the window glass.

"Maybe," Rory told her. "But the process to getting there is the ugliest thing."

"If you want to look at it that way. You don't have to, you know. You can work at it, change your own mind. Be the happy girl I used to know before the hormones you point at and blame."

Being happy and seeing beauty. Oh, those were things of yesterday. Rory squeezed her eyes shut and saw again this morning's misery. Tied to the toilet, it seemed ten thousand breakfasts were heaved from her insides. Over and over she vomited, until her stomach felt the force of repetitious crunches, without the benefit. Soreness overtook her every bone, and yet there was to be no stillness as she heaved just when she was preparing to find her shaky way off the floor.

And then Dean had entered the bathroom, concerned as always about her body's explosive reaction to the little thing nestled inside. He tried to be with her in those ugliest of times, but sometimes his stomach was weak, too. And on mornings like this one, he had to nudge her aside just enough so that he could vomit as a response to her gagging wails. She made him sick, and she hated it. She caused volatile reactions in her boyfriend's stomach. She'd sniffled and understood why writers since ancient times had fumbled with the idea of romance dying, of former lust going dead. Dean must see her as a Vomit Machine now. A trigger to the gag reflex, complaining lately the whole way.

She and Dean had slept together, created a new life together. Now they were sick together, and she remembered nothing but the disgust that it gave her. She didn't remember the way he always profusely apologized, or the way his eyes sought hers to reassure that it wasn't _her_ that made his own breakfast empty itself that way. She hadn't felt his fingers lightly caressing the sweaty skin of her neck that morning. All she'd felt was the loss of his presence as he got up from the floor and walked away. The way that she couldn't, for another round of upchucking seized her then, and didn't let go till it had totaled any happiness that might have chirped from her voice that day.

Rory didn't bother to grab the small brush in her purse and smooth down her hair that was still wet from nature's morning shower, and ruffled from being stuck against the window with her forehead. She found it so hard to care what passers-by would think of her as she stared at the rest of the world that was living life to a fuller extent. Surely they all had better things to focus on, to retrain their eyes at. She knew that the instant they saw her, they'd forget her. Strangers would ignore her plight they knew nothing of.

Was this how new life was created, by draining the zest out of her? Was this what people called beautiful about pregnancies: the grossness, the embarrassment, the constant nausea and dizziness? The way some women could call it the happiest time in their lives made her consider what their lives must have been like before pregnancy. As for her life, it had been great. It had been headed in the brightest of directions.

Where was her life headed now?

"Come on," Lorelai urged from the driver's seat. "Smile, laugh a little... Michel does plies and butt crunches behind the front desk when he thinks no one's watching, but of course I am." She looked at Rory, then looked back at the road. "Sometimes Sookie hands me popcorn."

"Please don't make me laugh right now, I may vomit again."

"Honey, half the reason you vomit so much is because you let yourself get so stressed out. The lighter Rory hardly ever had such gag-attack reactions to things."

"'The lighter Rory'? Are you saying I'm fat now?"

"No, I meant, ugh." Lorelai rolled her eyes. "I meant the part of you that saw the lighter part of life. You know? Sunshine? Daisies? Technicolor?"

"Go ahead and joke."

"Go ahead and take everything so damn seriously. Rory, honey... look at me. Hurry, because I have to look back at the road before that big bend attacks the car's wheels. Only one contracted to do that is Sideshow Bob. Or maybe that was just for Bart Simpson..."

"Seriously, Mom," Rory said to her, eyes gone dark and stormy as the clouds above. "I am sensing a serious lack of sympathy coming from everything in your corner of the planet. You'd think you could care a little more, considering you went through this exact thing."

"First of all, nothing about this situation is exactly like mine. And second? I don't think I need to hear this crap from you."

"Mom, I just meant --"

"Oh, I know. Don't explain it to me further; don't give yourself another chance to hear out loud how wrong you are. I care, Rory." She looked into her daughter's eyes that were finally looking back, after successfully passing the bend in the road. "If there's anyone in this situation who doesn't care enough... it sure as hell's not me."

With that, Lorelai turned on the radio. Contemporary pop filled the car's empty spots until her hand switched the dials to another radio station. Rory knew what that meant: silent voices commenced. Argument disconnected. Her body sat unsteadily in the wake of her mother's anger and the still-falling drops of that morning's chilly tears, discarded away and falling from the trees. She held her own tears in, burying them deep down inside her chest cavity. Her breaths had a hoarse quality she refused to pay mind to.

--

"At last, you're both here," Emily said immediately, impatiently snatching Lorelai into the house, letting Rory and her delicate condition enter on their own.

"Were you that hungry, Mom?" Lorelai's voice mocked weakly in comparison to other lunches spent with her mother, the snap seemingly gone lax from the argument she'd just run to the radio from. Rory eyed her mother, holding her arms criss-crossed over her stomach as if otherwise the baby would explode out her belly button. She took this stance often. People seemed to understand her body language's clear "don't bother me".

"Hungry?" Emily inquired. "Oh, right. We were going to have lunch."

Lorelai looked at the two family members before her, both seeming to have gone insane. "Uh... yeah, thought that was the whole point. You didn't want to do dinner because it depresses you looking at Dad's empty chair."

"Oh, your father," Emily said, raising a 19th century show of a delicate hand to her forehead. "I simply cannot stand the insolence of him, not returning my phone calls except to reply directly to my messages through our answering machine. He won't answer my questions as to his whereabouts, any of them. What could he possibly be doing? His life is here."

"Well, _you're_ here, that's for sure."

"Lorelai, I could do without the jokes right now."

"Okay. Everybody seems to be having a dire, serious kind of day." Lorelai lifted her eyes to the ceiling briefly, seeming to be conjuring a thought. "Maybe I should leave so you two can be serious together, without the jokes. That idea sounds better and better every time it flies through my head. Let's do that, huh?"

Rory almost smiled, but Emily's eyes narrowed. "Lorelai, don't be ridiculous. Follow me to the parlor for drinks. You're going to stay, and we're going to have lunch the proper way."

"With crossed legs?" Lorelai put in, but when Emily's eyes narrowed further to slits, she drew an invisible zipper across her lips and tossed the key toward the coat closet.

Sighing, Emily led the way to the room any of the three women could find with closed eyes. As Lorelai and Rory sat down, she made her way to the drink cart. "Martini, Lorelai? And Rory, will you have a club soda, dear?"

"Nothing with bubbles, please," Rory croaked and then stopped, not wanting to keep her mouth open any longer than was required. She still wasn't sure she could stomach this lunch, both literally and figuratively. But her grandmother had been insistent they continue to see her on Fridays, and having the meal earlier was the sensible option since Rory's current bedtime (or "moment she passed out in the crapshack") migrated up to late afternoon at times. Unpredictability: another thing to add to the list of why pregnancies suck and Rory might force herself to become a nun.

"Lorelai, one olive or two?"

"Three," Lorelai said brazenly.

Emily rolled her eyes, but complied. Usually Rory would have a comeback, but she was currently working to only let her lips slide open partially for breath needed from time to time. The wider her mouth opened, the easier it was to spook her stomach and wind up hugging the bathroom floor for warmth. It took all of her concentration sometimes to keep things settled inside of her.

Emily handed Lorelai her drink, adding a dry look as she served. Then two ice cubes were plunked into a glass of water, which she gave to Rory.

"Where is the maid?" The thought suddenly occurred to Rory and the way it felt bothersome couldn't be avoided.

"Did you finally fire all maids in the Connecticut area?" Lorelai asked, swirling the olive-clad toothpick in her drink. "Are we going to have to start immigrating potential employees from third world countries?"

"I'm sure those would be the most competent of people for my household," Emily said with bite, taking a seat of her own with her gin mix in hand. "I've let the servants off for the day on account of the rain. I thought it would last much longer than it did, in the end. But after all, what do weather forecasters know these days?"

"You let people off because of rain? After making a seven year-old attend a luncheon with the chicken pox? Geeze, Mom, my spots scared the hostess' little dogs away."

"Lorelai, what does your childhood have to do with this? The servants are clumsy and they're always getting in my way. I thought a day off might cool all our tempers."

The sip of water Rory tentatively took amplified the morning breath taste already ensnared in her mouth. She lowered the glass and put a hand to her lips, forcing down any waves with willpower alone. Her mother and grandmother argued on and on as the room began to spin.

"Um..." she squeaked out, swaying in her seat and seeking a clear center of gravity. She'd never been worried of falling while already sitting down before. Her head was getting so heavy, she thought it might lead her crashing down to the floor at the couch's feet. "Mom? Grandma?"

Lorelai stopped what she was so deliciously mocking, and she and Emily turned to the girl gone faint and pale faced.

"My goodness, Rory, are you all right?" Emily asked while Lorelai slid closer to Rory on the couch to put an arm around her shoulders and steady the impending fall.

"I'm... I don't know." Rory's eyes were on the ground, but the images in her head were not of the carpet; rather its color, spinning madly before her with no clear shape or form. "I'm dizzy," she finally managed.

"How dizzy?" Lorelai asked, her voice full of concern. And that was when Rory's body bent forward, as if she were being folded in half. Her body started to slide off of the cushion, and it was only Lorelai's arms that were quick enough to save her from smashing her nose to the ground. "Whoa, whoa, babe... You definitely need to lie down."

All Rory could eek out was, "Okay."

--

The distant rumbles of thunder from earlier had done as promised, and brought forth more rain. It was pounding outside the window as Lorelai guided Rory's stumbling body to the one bedroom in this giant house they'd both had to call their own. Rory climbed on the bed quickly and awkwardly. Lorelai's arms remained close until her daughter's head was secure on the pillow, her body centered on the mattress.

"Is that any better?" Emily asked, having followed the two into the room.

"Yeah," Rory lied, just to get the talking to stop. It made her head pound, those questions of reasonable volume amplifying to bang around inside her skull. "I just... just need rest. Quietness..."

Lorelai grabbed a blanket from the closet and covered Rory's body with it, while Rory closed her eyes and let the material be molded close to her body by caring hands. Lorelai's voice came in a whisper: "What can we do for you, honey?"

Whispered back, just as quietly, was Rory's, "Let me get some sleep. Then I'll be better."

_I'll be better... Better after this_, she thought. And then her mind wanted to stray around what was meant by _this_. When her pain would be completely over. But the answers were like loud colors and voices, and only made her long more for secluded noiseless sleep.

"Rory, we'll leave you just there, and wait downstairs for when you're feeling up to lunch. An intercom's been installed in this room, as in most others. Just let us know if you need us." Emily nodded at Lorelai, who looked woefully at her daughter, and then followed her mother out of the room, turning off the light before pulling the door closed. Rory saw none of this, as her eyes were closed, against the pain and against the world. Lying alone, in the darkness, her mind closed off to everything but the one sound that soothed her: the pitter-patter pounding of the raindrops outside.

--

What happened next had to wait through the intensity of Rory's dream. The nightmares were attacking with less brutal force the past couple of days. She'd felt more sanctioned in the fruits of her own mind, the break from the terror helping her continue on. But she'd grown immune to nothing, and the nightmares found her again.

As soon as sleep gripped her body and made it visibly less still, she found a baby in her arms again. A child, wrapped up in a receiving blanket, its face covered so she couldn't see. Not what it looked like, not if it was okay. It made no sound, and so she jiggled her arms gently in hopes of coaxing out some life.

In the process, the baby slipped from the blanket, and out of Rory's arms. Upon reaching the floor it shattered like glass, staining everything below with its shards that were quick to cut Rory's hands as they reached frantically into the pieces, seeking wholeness again. Her baby was broken, and the tears echoing around her begged for it to be in her arms again, inside of the blanket, safe from the world. She watched as the elements dissipated, falling through her spread fingers like sand, draining away and gone forever.

Her dream voice sobbed till her throat ached. The larger pieces of glass that still had form cut painful slits in her hands and lower arms as she frantically sought them all, gathering them in her arms. Her feet stumbled forward and her arms became heavier as she was determined the pick up every slither of glass and keep it, save it, soothe it. Without warning there was a cry from behind her, a cry so loud Rory screamed and dropped all that she'd gathered in her arms.

The pieces fell in a millisecond, shattering for the second time. Twice as suddenly, twice as loud.

And she awoke. Her eyes flew open, wild with fright, her body jolted from the suddenness. She found the window in her barely conscious state, blown open no doubt by a gust of rain-splattered wind. She could see the rain falling in sheets outside, soaking both sides of the windowpane. There was a broken figurine on the floor, its porcelain remains scattered on the carpet. Rory took loud and shallow breaths, able to see nothing but the broken mess on the floor, until a clap of thunder sounded that rumbled the very hinges that held the house together. She could feel its vibrations, and then suddenly she felt something else. Eyeing the glass on the carpet and understanding its relation to her life, she was plagued by the pain that suddenly seized her and didn't let go.

The loudest rumble of thunder yet roared then, like giant clapping hands. Lightning bright as heaven's eyes zigzagged across the entire sky... The house shook as much as Rory herself when half a second later, the small nightlight in the corner went out. She was left in darkness and silence, but for the storm.

More thunder sounded, the intensity of its volume eclipsing any previous rages from the sky. Rory cried out as a great stabbing pain sliced into her stomach, and then she was kept from crying again when the next stab took the breath from her body and left her gasping just to fill up her lungs again. A churning sound emitted from just beneath her belly button, and the third stab had Rory's voice finding a way to scream. She screamed and the sky thundered in synchronized moments, keeping her voice buried, and leaving her completely alone.

"Mom..." she whispered, voice gone hoarse from the unheard tears.

She couldn't see her mother downstairs in the kitchen, trying to calm down Emily as her ranting about Richard's absence escalated. Lorelai was drying spotless glasses left in a rack hidden under the sink, as if desperate to escape the insanity of the woman pacing before her. When the lights went out, both women gasped. Then Lorelai got a question back together. "Why don't you try not calling him for a day, Mom?"

Rory was searching for pockets in her clothing, sitting up in bed and letting out a fresh scream with every new stab in her stomach. Her hands came back empty of the cell phone she'd left in her purse downstairs. Hands filled with dark, sticky blood. Shaking violently now, it took Rory a full minute to grasp a hold of the blanket still covering her bottom half. She threw it off to confront the pool of blood leaking from her, staining this bed so it would never be the same. No cell phone, and the electricity had gone out. Rory looked longingly at the intercom on the wall. It seemed unlikely it was working, and it was so far away.

"God, Dean, where are you?" In her miserable state, she couldn't think clearly, couldn't remember where he was at. Only that he should be there that second to find her, to save her, to help her save herself. And to save them both from what all that blood pooled on the sheets meant. All she could comprehend was her solitude and the pain making her curl up now, sapping strength from her voice. All she could witness was the illumination of her terror every time huge bolts of lightning lit up everything around her that she didn't want to see.

She couldn't see Dean, held up at Doose's Market. She didn't know that Taylor had asked him to take over the store for the night while he prepared for an emergency town meeting on account of something flippant and even more ridiculous. She wasn't there to watch Dean's eyes wandering to the store's exit, held mesmerized by the storm outside. She couldn't know the sudden fear that gripped him in its clutches when the grocery store's lights flickered at one point and almost went out. He'd suddenly felt a need to get to her, knowing intuitively, somehow from that flicker, that something was wrong.

Rory reached the intercom by bearing the excruciating pain that held her captive and inching her way along the wall with most of her weight leaning on it. She was slower than an infant taking their first steps, and she felt every second pass painfully by. The intercom link was dead, though she pressed the button to communicate more times than was necessary. Sniffling and doing her best to calm the asthmatic-like breaths that kept coming too quickly for her to catch any air, Rory's bloody hand closed on the door handle. The blood made the surface slippery, and for what felt like forever it kept sliding uselessly all around the knob. It wouldn't open! Her hands, even once pressed to her dress, remained soaking and wouldn't dry.

She didn't know that Dean was striving to get to her. There was no answer when he called her, three times in a row. "The store's closing," Dean kept trying, but the shoppers paid him no attention. Nobody wanted to have to walk their groceries home in weather that had suddenly turned so gloomy and wet. Dangerous, even, with those lightning bolts crackling through the atmosphere. "Seriously, it's time to close," Dean continued, trying to rush people out the door. No one would budge except to seek out more to fill their plastic baskets. Dean was raking a hand through his hair, and finding sweat on his forehead as he did so. She didn't know, but he was panicking at the same moments she was, though his brain nagged that he didn't know why.

"This is not a 24/7 deal." He breathed out through his nostrils, becoming impatient. The more he let on that he wanted everyone to leave, the less desire they had to listen. "Get out!" he finally had to say, when no other words became noticed. "Everyone, out! Now!" But when they asked why, all he could explain was that "There might be an emergency." He was trapped, and so far away.

Rory finally managed to wrap her skirt's cloth around her hand enough so that the doorknob slid open. And then there was the long, blacked out hallway that stretched on for an eternity, for all she could see. Her vision was blurred from the pain, the tears, and the intensity of the trembles that shook her to her bones. "_Mom_," she called through the hallway as strongly as she could muster. She broke down into a fit of tears and collapsed on the carpet, one hand touching the door to keep it open. Blood pooling between her legs, and stomach under attack.

She felt nothing but alone, alone, alone. Crying and calling out for a hero, for a do-over in life. It was only seconds longer before she collapsed completely and her head banged on the carpet. Her eyes closed tightly and she comprehended no more.

--

When the bedroom door finally flew open, Rory lay unconscious and breathed raggedly through her throat. Her name was cried and a figure bent beside her, ordering her to wake up, sobbing that this couldn't be happening.

But it was.

- -  
to be continued...


	14. Like You'll Never

Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: I was telling my beta just now, that it's for a reason I cannot put my finger on that this series is taking so long to force itself out through my fingers. I thank anyone for their patience, if you're still with me.  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p  
Summary: What was the biggest mistake of your life?  
Rating: R  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Rory and Dean  
Spoilers: Season 4  
Beta: Thank you, Elyssa, for your engaging thoughts.  
Warning: Dark imagery ahead, though no darker than anything that's already been touched on in this story.

**Chapter Thirteen: Like You'll Never**

- -  
The first thing to invade her psyche was red. Angry deep red, flowing behind her closed eyelids like a raging river of death. Blood, lost and gone, flowing further and further away. The river carried a loved one in its tumultuous flow. Rory's baby, barely formed and already being drowned in the life force that ran through her veins, now headed for either heaven or hell.

Somewhere past her subconscious, she heard voices -- some familiar and some of strangers she had never known. Lorelai's voice was the loudest, her words indiscernible, but the overall sound was a startling thing. It broke up the red river's flow, creating bubbles in the liquid to make it steam up and begin melting away. Rory couldn't see herself, couldn't feel the stickiness of the river around her; she wasn't there in her mind's own hell, and neither was she a part of the life outside that was continuing without her consciousness. Still, she felt a force trying to pull her from the blood, from the flashing red, into the universe from which part of her had fled.

The world was coming back to her in a series of little quivers that felt so much like goodbye.

She could hear nurses' and doctors' voices stepping into her unconscious state amid her dreams of all the yesterdays that didn't prepare her for today. "She's hemorrhaging," came an unfamiliar male's voice, frenzied and concerned. "She's losing a lot of blood. Take her to bed seven in the E.R. -- give her --"

"What's happening? How is the baby?" This was Lorelai's voice. Rory's mother, who she couldn't see. She couldn't see anything but the flowing blood as it dried up, the river falling through cracks in the foundation of her mind, and leaving behind nothing of color to cling to.

"She's -- we're going to find out. We're losing it. We're losing... Hurry her to bed seven! Are you the mother?"

"Yes, I'm -- yes. Is she --"

"You're going to have to wait here. Just outside here. We're doing the best we can."

"She's bleeding so much! She's lost so much blood..." Rory could hear her mother sobbing, but couldn't find her face in her mind. She walked through deserted streets in a black-and-white world, the river having drained all living color but grey. Stark and sterile, the world gazed at Rory with a lack of sympathy. "She's lost so much... Help her!"

Help, ha. It was a wry thought etched in severe white lettering on a building of black stone. There was no help this day, in this place. No help for the girl who was falling without a net, and without a baby to catch at the bottom. There was no reason to stretch out her arms that ached so deeply, and so she left them at her sides. No help for this girl, only an expanse of a black and white universe devoid of all color and love. She ambled through it on crippled legs, falling to scratch her knees that oozed blood now made of grey matter, and nothing else. She made her way through the streets, searching for something worth seeing, now that so much was simply gone. Denied color and security, her mind found endless alleys that had forgotten the sun.

--

Rory's mind began to take on memories like small slideshows in her head. Still pictures taken at exactly the perfect time.

She was seven, and she felt the foreign rush of delinquency as she stretched up on her tip-toes to reach the latch of the wooden door concealing Mary Tennant's back yard. It was part of a very tall fence, but Rory was very tall for her age. She managed to undo the lock, and then she giggled as she snuck in past the door, her mother at her heels.

"I see we can mark 'stealthy' off the list of adjectives you must become," Lorelai said with pride in her voice. "Ah, I knew you'd misbehave one of these days. You were becoming so perfect I thought you'd never answer the door with bed head or stick your gum under the table again."

Rory shook her head and rolled her eyes good-naturedly. She looked away from her mother, who brought on so many smiles.

And there it was. Mary's brand new trampoline, set in the center of the yard, atop grass so green you'd never know it was almost September. Rory loved when summer lasted its full length, bathing her in its sunshine and warmth. Surrounding her in luxurious green on every tree branch, every flower stem. If only summer was forever and none of those flowers had to die. She'd never been able to see quite the same magic as her mother found always in the snow. What were millions of disintegrating flakes when compared to dozens of blooming roses?

_Sludge and thorns. The ugliness is all she now sees._

Mary and her parents were out of town. Lorelai and Rory were house-sitting. Today? They were house-jumping. Onto the trampoline Rory scrambled, immediately overjoyed as the elastic material stretched beneath her body and dipped toward the ground. The paradox of being able to sink the material with her weight and then bounce into the air as if weightless thrilled Rory's senses and limbs that she stretched up and away.

"I thought I called first bounce!" Lorelai complained as she climbed onto the glee-inducing structure moments behind her daughter. "Oh well. At least this way, if we get caught, I can say that you did it first."

"Fine," Rory answered carelessly, loving the bouncing, every sinking sensation like falling down an elevator shaft followed by being flung into the air by a gigantic sling-shot. Now Lorelai was bouncing, too, her lovely legs propelling Rory ever higher. Happy and hyper in the foreign back yard, she had the coolest mom ever, she thought. Every stitch of her laughter was echoed by Lorelai. Oh, they were giggling, bouncing fools, giddy even though they had promised to leave the trampoline alone.

Lorelai, still to some a kid herself at a mere 23 years of age, jumped along and played as though she was on a school playground. She lived out the childhood she had missed as she watched her own child grow up. She participated in every stage of Rory's development, truly a part of all facets of Rory's life. They jumped together on the trampoline just that once, which made it exceptionally special. Slamming each other for hours -- timing the big bounce to be right before the other person lands, allowing the other person to ricochet up closer to the clouds. Squeals and giggles abounded to move the still summer air. It was cool that Lorelai bounced, too. She wasn't like other moms. Not at all. Rory loved that about her.

"I want to fly when I grow up," Rory told her mother as she reached for the sky. "Higher than the airplanes and the birds. Higher than the weather. I want to sit on top of the rain."

_These stars we breathe will shake the moon._

--

Angry black clouds and menacing thunder rocked the colorless world of Rory's mind, threatening rain and things much worse. As drops fell to wet her skin that had gone white as a ghost, there was a giggle that arose above the splish-splash of minute drops on the ground. Rory did her best to move forward, toward the sound that was faint and yet gorgeously rounded into a complete capture of happiness. She sought the happiness she'd heard, stumbling along the brick-laden roads that were so 18th century, on her way to the giggle that called to her.

She knew that voice, though she'd never heard it before. It was unfamiliar but _right_. It was a part of her she hadn't known was there, a creation that had taken wing when she hadn't been looking. She had to find it. She had to identify the giggle before she went mad with the very curiosity that killed every cat. Pained and powerless, she moved forward, inch by awful inch.

--

Rory wondered why people had the need to decorate treasures with the name of the object of their desire. She studied it one day, the strangeness, as she watched Lane draw "Seth" in bubble letters during social studies. Over and over again, all over Lane's binder was that one and only word that seemed to sum up a fourth grader's notion of love: _Seth_.

Rory's binders and notebooks were free of random squiggles, of the immature graffiti that was common for others her age. She chose to save her sharpened pencil points for margins of books. What a wonderful thing the library was, but it was better to own the books herself, so that she could litter them with her own thoughts spawned from the ideas in text. What others wrote was decoration, names of crushes and movie Gods; what Rory wrote was intellectual stimulation -- a broadened, heightened interpretation of all that she read and saw. Others were escaping the drone of the social studies teacher's voice. Rory was improving her mind, seizing in every moment possible the chance to grow to be the girl who would one day wear a Harvard sweater in a Harvard classroom.

Lane dreamed of holding Seth's hand. Or maybe John's. Rory dreamed of being introduced to fellow Ivy League alumni, impressing everyone with her firm handshake and her tied-back no-nonsense hair. She dreamed up the pantsuit that she would wear. When others complimented her smart fashion sense, she would give a small smile of contentment and thank them in a humble voice. They would admire her; they might even envy her confidence, her class, and her unmarked notebooks. They would accept her as one of them, and she would finally feel grown up. Capable of all that the mind can undertake. Ready to seek out the very depths of intellect and shine light in corners of the brain that were previously held in shadow.

_So many shadows all around. Black as night, dark as death, chilled as frozen bone. Alone; that's what shadows meant. Alone._

--

Her tears were chilly as they slid down her cheeks. What she cried for need not be pinned down. She cried for everything, everyone that was absent from this place. She had lost them, and their voices had stopped penetrating the clouds to make the air reverberate like the inside of a beaten drum. She beat her legs with her fists to vent her frustration, and kept straining to cough out a sound. There was so much silence until the giggle rang again.

Desperate to find the source, to pin it down and hold it hostage in her heart that ached while barely beating, she ran this way and that. Frantically, she raced down long alleys, the soles of her feet making slaps on the stones below to announce her chase. To announce that she was coming; she was on her way.

Titter-titter in the wind; snicker-doodle in her ears. She rounded a final corner, and suddenly one shadow faded to reveal the child who was waiting for her. He moved like a shimmer, and it became obvious now why she couldn't pin him down. The child never once stayed in one place an entire second. His form wilted and blinked, exploding in vivid flashes here and there, for not nearly long enough. She so badly wanted to look at him, but he was so hard to see.

_Everywhere there is death._

The child did not speak, but when a smile broadened his face, it lingered into laughter. He had no words, but he communicated and she sought to understand. She tried to smile herself, but every step she took closer forced him further away. His presence moved back and forth, in and out of the world before her as though he were the blinking light on an answering machine. Whatever message he brought with him, she couldn't grasp. She didn't know. She was held so spellbound and still by the sight of him that her brain ceased to analyze and probe. She loved him in her mind, softly, lightly. She didn't dare touch him, for fear he'd fade away.

He didn't need to stay in one place, or hold onto a single pose. She knew him instinctively; she saw he was her child. The one once inside of her that now flashed before her. The one who couldn't stay; the one who was escaping right before her eyes.

He noticed her, too, or at least it seemed so. He put a small hand over his mouth to muffle a sob. It wasn't hers to hear.

_A baby cries out in the night. He is mine, but I cannot have him._

--

With grand gestures of each limb, she swayed this way and that, embarrassed for short seconds whenever her skirt flew up to reveal white cotton panties stamped with Strawberry Shortcake. She was to convey a swan, and moving her head forward and back as she parted the waters before her, she concentrated on this and made it her task. To transform, to be an animal; to be something other than Rory. The music was not playing, but there was a melody in her head. The swan dipped and dived beneath the surface of the water, but as she surfaced again and shook dry her silk feathers, embarrassment confronted her once more.

Lorelai was watching, had gone beyond laughter and was now smiling like a goon.

"Mom! You're not supposed to watch when I practice! I'm... it's not ready to be watched yet!" Rory huffed and lowered her feather-covered arms, nervously plucking her leotard away from where it rested over her belly button to allow it to snap back tighter into place. "I'm not ready to be seen."

Lorelai tittered at the dancing fiasco, and let forth a guffaw at the "swan" in her kitchen. She wiped imaginary tears from her cheeks that encased a grin much too wide. "Oh, dear God, is there no end? Make it stop," she threw out to the universe, bringing a delicate hand over her forehead, playing the part that she might faint.

"Miss Patty says my dancing is beautiful." Rory glared with fierce eyes.

"Of course she does. I'm paying her to say that."

"Underachiever."

"Ha. Gladly." Lorelai cleared her throat and took a seat at the kitchen table. Rory watched the legs of the chair scrape along the floor, leaving boisterous noises along their way. She found dancing to be a desirable endeavor in that she could glide across the room with more interest than those who merely walked, boring the earth below them with their predictable steps never changing.

Rory fluffed her feathered cap, then readjusted her bodice. "You know, if your opinion of my sporting activities mattered to me, that would sting."

"Thank God you're detached. And God, do you always talk like a 32 year-old?"

"One of us should."

Lorelai swatted at Rory's behind lightly with a folded up newspaper. "Go. Leap. Away with you!"

--

Dean wanted to name him Joel. He looked like a Joel. His bone structure was that of a young child of four. Creamy white skin encased his eyes of blue that had captured the glory of a summer sky. She watched him with tears falling from her own eyes, also made of blue.

His hair was long for such a young child, the strands ending just above his shoulders, and it was dark as midnight's black abyss. So many times his tiny fingers reached up to sweep heavy bangs aside in order to bear his eyes. He looked toward her, but not at her. He saw things, but not everything. He looked at many things around her while she saw nothing but him. The radiant blue of his eyes was the only color in this dark place that reeked of death. And she cried for the baby that she could see whose pathway had never come to enrich her own life with its memory, its existence. Its screams and its smiles. _His_ smiles. And his beauty.

He had Dean's supple mouth and Rory's soft eyelashes. His laugh was Lorelai in a bottle.

Rory cocked her head at the spectacle of this child flashing in and out of her nightmare existence. She bit her lip till she could taste the metallic tang of drawn blood. She kept her blinks short, eyelids closing and reopening at the speed of a hummingbird's wings. She could see him before her, but already he was gone. She was beginning to lose sense of the colorless world surrounding her. It was beginning to fold in on itself: the sky was falling, the ground was up-heaving, the raindrops blew every which way.

When finally she uttered a sob, it was because Joel with Dean's lips and hair made of silk, only to look at not to touch, faded as the world closed in on him. The world took him within its jaws and swallowed him, leaving Rory bereft and alone. There was nothing left to see or hear; nothing good to feel in this place, or any other.

--

This time the childhood giggles were her own. Water splashed all around her in the Connecticut summer, and seven year-old Rory was submerged for delectable seconds, her ears plugged by the water, the whole world blocked out. When she resurfaced, there was Lorelai, snapping pictures with a disposable camera in her red and blue bikini.

_Tell me you love me. Tell me it matters. Make me believe you while I believe nothing from this day on._

The beach was hot, and its sand stung Rory's toes as she dug them beneath the ground's surface and buried them in the cooler dirt beneath. "Get back out in the water!" Lorelai yelled, clapping her hands excitedly. "I need to test the waterproof guarantee of this piece of junk." She waved the camera held in her hands, and Rory sprinted back out to the water that moved with the wind.

"Rory..." she heard as she screamed and flailed in the cool refreshing liquid. Delighted at the feel of it, she ignored this voice she didn't recognize. "_Rory_," it came again, stronger this time. The sky reverberated as if there were speakers in the heaven above. "Can you hear me?"

No, no. Never, never. She swam out into the depths, where minor waves crashed in from the horizon. Rory screamed and laughed, pure joy on her face and in her veins. She was in love with this memory, and chose to stay here, of all places. Right here. She could feel the strain of her smile on her face. Too wide it was, too expressive of happiness, pure and undiluted. At seven years of age, she had known what happiness was. At nineteen years of age, so much of her had forgotten. She didn't wish to go back to a reality that stung more than the sun's aimed rays.

She ignored the unfamiliar voice that insisted she come back to a world she didn't care to be a part of.

Where was that little one, who treaded water with joy and abandon? She lost a little one. Did that mean she'd never get back to happiness again? These thoughts haunted her, and though she did her best to ignore them, they would not be put aside. They would not be silenced under the water where she swam with fierce strength, in a terrible hurry to get far, far away from the pain that had only begun to set in.

- -  
to be continued...


End file.
